Ratner To Cash In on Stake in His Company
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Developer Bruce Ratner will net more than $60 million in cash by selling his 30% stake in Forest City Ratner to its parent company.
The Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises Inc. announced a definitive agreement yesterday that is expected to close within 90 days. The $7.8 billion real estate company, which is controlled by the extended Ratner family, will now own 100% of its New York subsidiary.
Mr. Ratner’s title, president and chief executive officer of Forest City Ratner, will not change, and he will oversee the $4.2 billion proposal to build a basketball arena and 16 towers containing more than 2,300 market-rate condominiums, 4,500 rental apartments, and office and retail space near downtown Brooklyn, according to a statement by Forest City Enterprises.
Elsewhere in New York, Mr. Ratner, a former commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, is developing the New York Times’s new headquarters near Port Authority and a 683-unit residential building in Lower Manhattan, among other projects.
An equity analyst for RBC Capital Markets, Richard Moore, who has covered Forest City Enterprises, said the sale of the 30% stake is not likely to affect the Forest City Ratner’s New York projects or Mr. Ratner’s involvement.
“It will be the same people, the same entities, the same decision makers. He will run FCR just as he ran it before,” Mr. Moore said. “Basically, this was more designed for Bruce personally to have more liquidity to make philanthropic donations.
“He is getting older, and it is time for him personally to do things a little differently,” Mr. Moore said.
Forest City Enterprises is the nation’s largest publicly traded commercial real estate development company, according to its Web site.
