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TR U M P STR A TEGI ES FO R R E A L ESTA TE

in the property, and asked me to handle the acquisition for him, the
land on which the building was built was owned by a wealthy German
family who had granted a long-term lease to a bank that had built the
building as its headquarters.
Unfortunately, the building had a very troubled past with many
building operators. At one time, Ferdinand Marcos, the infamous pres-
ident of the Philippines owned it, and during his tenure the building
was run into the ground. Eventually, it went into foreclosure and was
sold to a member of the Resnick family who had loads of real estate
experience, but who still couldn’t make it work. He let it go into fore-
closure and the holder of the mortgage took it back. Then it went to
Kinson Group out of Hong Kong. They put millions of dollars into it,
but they also failed dismally. Nobody seemed able to come up with a
plan that could transform 40 Wall Street from a loser to a winner.
The underlying problem was that the ground lease (the lease for the
land on which the building was built) was antiquated and contained
provisions that were hostile to potential occupants, making it difficult
for anyone to finance a purchase of the lease or needed building ren-
ovations. Although they tried, none of the previous owners could ever
get the ground lease modified to eliminate the deficiencies it con-
tained. Percy Pyne was the man who represented the German prop-
erty owner, and nobody was able to bypass him in order to negotiate
directly with the owner. Pyne was a difficult man to deal with and
continually placed unacceptable obstacles in the way of every deal
that was proposed.
While the Kinson group poured millions of dollars into the prop-
erty, they also forced most tenants out of the building, leaving it al-
most vacant, except for a law firm that occupied seven floors on a
long-term lease. Kinson left the building with virtually no services
and in terrible shape, and to make matters worse, their failure to pay
contractors resulted in the filing of several mechanic liens adding up
to almost a million dollars against the building. Since there was no

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