From a long but very informative article What Donald Trump's Plaza Deal Reveals About His White House Bid - NYT, by David Segaljan, 2016 January 16
..... Mr. Trump quickly agreed to a price of slightly more than $400 million, an unprecedented sum for a hotel at the time. Just a few years later, the Plaza wound up in bankruptcy protection, part of a vast and humiliating restructuring of some $900 million of personal debt that Mr. Trump owed to a consortium of banks. Never one for regrets, Mr. Trump today regards the purchase as a triumph. ..... < snip > ..... In the Plaza tale, Mr. Trump demonstrated both strengths (an ability to charm or strong-arm, as the occasion required) and weaknesses (a kind of hungry impatience that left him searching for new trophies as soon as one had been acquired). ..... < snip > In fact, the more you know about Mr. Trump's past, the more his run for high office looks like an effort to close the biggest deal of his life. "He has the ability to imagine what the other party wants him to be and then be that person," said Michael D'Antonio... "He presents the Trump that will work in the moment." ..... < snip > ..... There was, for instance, the moment in 1984 when he told The Washington Post he could handle the United States' side of nuclear arms talks with the Soviets. "It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles," he boasted. "I think I know most of it anyway." ..... < snip > Huge Debt, Lost Prize ..... Opinion was split over the merits of the deal. Among the many who thought that Donald Trump had overpaid was Donald Trump. ..... < snip > By 1990, the Plaza needed an operating profit of $40 million a year to break even, according to financial records that Mr. Trump disclosed at the time. The hotel had fallen well short of that goal, and with renovating expenses, in one year it burned through $74 million more than it brought in. But Mr. Trump didn't spend a lot of time sweating over the Plaza's finances. He was too busy with new challenges. A few months after the Plaza deal closed, he purchased the Eastern Air Shuttle for $365 million, and in 1990, he opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, which cost $1 billion to build. Some of the loans he took out to pay for deals were personally guaranteed. "The fact is, you do feel invulnerable," Mr. Trump told Timothy O'Brien, author of "Trump Nation," discussing this period in his life. "And then you have a tendency to take your eye off the ball a little bit and hunt around for women. And hunt around for models." A lack of focus was not Mr. Trump's only problem. The updraft in the real estate market of the '80s turned into a headwind by the early '90s, and more than $3 billion in loans — $900 million of which were personally guaranteed — went into default. Dozens of banks came calling and, after lengthy negotiations, a meeting was held in a large conference room in the law offices of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the firm that represented the largest lender, Citibank. There, some 50 bankers and lawyers watched Mr. Trump sign over nearly all of his properties — the Plaza, other buildings, the shuttle, the yacht, the jet — in exchange for more favorable terms on his personal guarantees. The banks could have easily toppled Mr. Trump into personal bankruptcy, "but we all agreed that he'd be better alive than dead," said Alan Pomerantz, then head of the real estate department at Weil. "We needed him to help sell all of his assets, and the deal was that as he sold off more, we'd reduce his personal guarantee." In effect, the banks allowed Mr. Trump to remain solvent so that they could get the benefit of his gift for salesmanship. In exchange, the banks provided him with $450,000 a month to operate his business and cover personal expenses. It was so tight a leash that when Marla Maples, his girlfriend at the time, turned up on television waving the costly Harry Winston diamond she'd been given as an engagement ring, the paymasters wanted a word with the groom-to-be. ..... < snip > ..... None of the proceeds went to Mr. Trump, according to several people involved. Still, he told me that the sale was yet another victory. The terms were, to use one of his favorite words, fantastic, and relieved him of a vast personal debt. ..... Of course, it cost the Saudi-Singapore partnership $75 million less than Mr. Trump had spent for the same building seven years earlier. Mr. Trump also claimed in the interview that he owned 100 percent of the Plaza until the day it was sold, a version of events totally at odds with published reports at the time and the recollections of others involved in the deal. ..... < snip > ..... This may be yet another parallel to Mr. Trump's performance on the hustings, where he has bent the truth into so many outlandish shapes that PolitiFact anointed his entire campaign the 2015 Lie of the Year. ..... < snip >
The day Donald Trump called and asked for a one-on-one meeting in the winter of 1988, Tom Barrack was a relative newcomer to the high-stakes poker game of New York real estate. He had worked for nearly two years for Robert Bass, the Texas billionaire investor, and had played an important role in winning the Plaza Hotel for his boss the year before. Mr. Trump was the country's most quotable and ostentatious financial celebrity, a guy with a jet, a 282-foot yacht and a fondness for peach-toned marble. ..... < snip >
Of course, these days the renamed and re-branded Trump Organization is all about branding and licensing Trump name, not building things — it's safer, and keeps the rich celebrities... well, rich and celebrated, e.g.:
From Trump golf club in Puerto Rico files for bankruptcy - CNBC, by Karma Allen, 2015 July 13
Owned by developer Empresas Diaz, the club uses the Trump name under a licensing agreement. Donald Trump does not own the club. "We merely licensed our name for a fee and have nothing to do with the ownership, development or entity," Eric Trump, executive vice president of The Trump Organization and son of Donald Trump, said in a statement. ..... < snip > ..... In 2014, Trump Entertainment Resorts, a Trump-branded casino in Atlantic City, filed for bankruptcy protection due to declining revenue and increased competition. The Trump International Golf Club Puerto Rico, which bears the name of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, court documents show.
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excerpt:
“...and more than $3 billion in loans — $900 million of which were personally guaranteed — went into default. Dozens of banks came calling ...There, some 50 bankers and lawyers watched Mr. Trump sign over nearly all of his properties — the Plaza, other buildings, the shuttle, the yacht, the jet — in exchange for more favorable terms on his personal guarantees.”
Well sure. But Ted Cruz did the wrong paperwork when he disclosed his $1.2 million loan with Goldman-Sachs and Citibank, so there!
YAWN...