The board of the Santa Ana-based commercial brokerage and investment firm Grubb & Ellis lambasted former company chairman Tony Thompson in a letter mailed to stockholders this week, accusing him of starting up a competing company and failing to repay company loans.
Thompson, who founded another company that merged with Grubb & Ellis last December, denied those accusations in a phone interview and responded with a letter of his own to stockholders.
Thompson is heading a competing slate of board of directors candidates in the upcoming stockholders annual meeting, set for Dec. 3. Thompson has been advocating — without success — to regain the seat he resigned from earlier this year to form his new venture, Thompson National Properties.
In its letter to stockholders, current board members state that properties controlled by Thompson are in default on loans from Grubb & Ellis and that Thompson sold shares of company stock on 16 different occasions. “One Thompson property remains in default on principal and interest payments of nearly $1 million and another is in arrears for expenses of more than $300,000,” the letter says. In addition, board members wrote:
“Anthony Thompson — who resigned as a director and as Chairman of the Board just two months after the merger of Grubb & Ellis and NNN Realty Advisors to start a competitor, Thompson National Properties — has launched a costly and disruptive proxy contest to elect himself and two others to your Board. We believe this is a blatant attempt by Mr. Thompson to ultimately take control of your Company and install one of his nominees, Stuart Tanz, as CEO of Grubb & Ellis. Furthermore, we believe Mr. Thompson may intend to cause your Company to either buy or absorb his fledgling company.”
Thompson said in a phone interview that his new company in no way competes with Grubb & Ellis, adding that a current board member serves on the board of another company that does compete with the firm.
He argued further that the debts mentioned in the board’s letter predate the time when he took over management of the properties in question. While conceding that he did sell 170,000 shares of company stock, he said he still owns more than 9 million shares, making him the company’s second-largest stockholder.
Other real estate news …
- Local foreclosures sink again … (MORE)
- .. but they’ve become a problem in Laguna Beach (MORE)
- O.C. sales jump still leaves buying pace well below history (MORE)
- Other SoCal counties see more buying, lower prices (MORE)
- For ZIP-by-ZIP analysis, click HERE!
- Affordability improves, but still troublesome (MORE)
- Supply of homes for sale remains modest (MORE)
- U.S. builder “optimisim” hits all-time low. (MORE)
- Would doubling the mortgage deduction help housing? (VOTE HERE)
- What’s next? DEBATE IS HERE!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=37acb9ee-ef5f-4a70-bdaf-b3abe02cea7a)
Isn’t the whole TIC business as crooked as the RELP business used to be? Convince rental property owners to sell their investment property (or new investors to put in cash) and do a tax-deferred exchange into a larger commercial property, where they will be one of several tenants-in-common from all over the place. Meanwhile, the same company that talked them into the deal manages the property for them and takes a rather large fee for doing so.
That’s like the RELPs that bought apartment complexes, and the general partners also owned the companies that managed the complexes, did the gardening, got the painting and re-roofing contracts, etc. The limited partners would get a little tax loss, and slowly have their capital returned to them so they thought they were actually making money on the deal. Their LP shares were totally illiquid, and eventually worthless.
Jason, isn’t it always the same ol’ game? Use other people’s money to make money for yourself. Mutual fund and hedge fund managers make money regardless of performance. It’s a great little game if you can get your foot in the door.
Could you really sleep good at night playing a nast game like that? I could.