Timothy O'Brien, Bloomberg: Trump's "empire" a family-owned boutique business, not too big to sell

[highplainsdem]

O'Brien is the author of the Trump biography TrumpNation. Trump sued him, unsuccessfully, for revealing that Trump isn't worth what he says he's worth.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-01/trump-s-business-is-not-too-big-to-sell

Trump’s supporters have argued that his business is too complex and sprawling to be sold or managed by others. Journalists have helped this argument along by routinely referring to Trump’s “vast real-estate empire.” In reality, though, the Trump Organization is neither vast nor an empire. It is lucrative, certainly, and Trump has longstanding personal attachments to the properties he’s bought and built. But his business is hardly a global conglomerate on the order of Apple, General Electric or Berkshire Hathaway, or a real estate giant akin to Brookfield Asset Management, the Blackstone Group or Cushman & Wakefield.

-snip-

Since Trump’s brush with personal bankruptcy decades ago, and in the wake of a series of corporate bankruptcies, he has favored licensing deals over outright ownership in a significant number of his ventures. The Trump Organization today has three main components: a licensing operation that attaches Trump’s name to other people’s buildings, as well as products like clothing and mattresses; a handful of golf courses and resorts; and certain domestic real estate and retail holdings.

Apart from the three golf courses he owns in Scotland and Ireland, Trump’s overseas operations consist of licensing deals that pay him a fee for the use of his name.

The domestic real estate business that Trump controls independently consists of one office building at 40 Wall Street in New York, two hotels in Chicago and Washington, several golf courses, and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. He has minority stakes in two buildings in California and New York that are owned by Vornado Realty Trust, and he has three hotel partnerships in Las Vegas and New York.

-snip-

Conflicts surrounding the Trump Organization could be addressed by 1) turning over the company’s licensing deals to a third party (or selling them) and 2) selling 12 golf courses, two hotels, one commercial building, one resort, some retail and commercial space, and liquidating a handful of hotel and real estate partnerships.

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Great demolition of the argument that Trump can't sell his business "empire" because it's too big.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. And he owns Trump Tower...

A listing of his properties, which shows him an inconsequential player in the NYC real estate market:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/09/29/trumps-real-estate-blues-the-biggest-reason-hes-down-800-million-this-year/#27950e7368cf