RTC=Right to Complain
Doesn’t anyone speak well of the Resolution Trust Corp.?
To no one’s surprise, results of a recent survey of 25 managers hired to take care of the S&L; cleanup agency’s troubled offices, shopping centers and apartment buildings show that they think that it’s a big, slow bureaucracy. Some gripes:
One Texas manager says he’s still waiting for RTC authority to fix $300 in windows that vandals shattered a year ago.
Six letters traveled back and forth between one property manager and the RTC before he was finally given approval to fix potholes in a parking lot.
The manager of a shopping center said he has lost potential tenants because he has had to wait six to eight months for the RTC to approve leases he arranged.
Betting on Bo
Oil futures. Pork belly futures. Orange juice futures. Why not Bo futures?
Baseball card dealers report that trading activity in Bo Jackson’s baseball and football cards has been unusually active now that his hip injury is raising questions about his future baseball/football career. Bo’s earliest baseball cards with the Kansas City Royals and his early Raiders football cards already fetch $9 to $20.
Do you bet Bo will rise or fall? Tarzana baseball card dealer Max Himmelstein says card value usually is determined by how well a player is doing on the field.
But because Bo is such a celebrity, Himmelstein said, his cards may become more valuable even if his career is cut short. Still, Himmelstein cautions investors not to invest by betting on just one player.
“Buying an individual card is like buying a stock,” Himmelstein said. “It goes up and down based on the performance of that player. But buying a full set is like buying a mutual fund.”
That’s a Lot of Tips
The former Coniston Partners guys--Keith Gollust, Paul Tierney and Augustus Oliver--have gone through some rough times. They got out of the corporate raiding business when the junk bond business tanked. And they rode the plunge in the stock of United Airlines’ parent last year to a paper loss of $158.2 million.
But don’t feel sorry yet. The just-released annual report from TW Holdings, the company they own that is best known for its Irvine-based Denny’s Inc. coffee shop chain, shows that the three were paid an annual “advisory fee” of $1 million last year and $34.7 million in fees and dividends in 1989 in connection with their TW purchase. The three also earned $6 million in interest from $50 million in senior notes that TW issued them in a swap for preferred stock.
Briefly . . .
Who said Chapter 11 is cheap? Law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom charged retailer Carter Hawley Hale $714,000 in fees and expenses for bankruptcy court work from Feb. 11 to Feb. 28, which comes to $42,000 a day.
