Brookfield Shows Interest in Maguire, Too

The saga of Maguire Properties Inc. continued to unfold today with word that Brookfield Properties Corp. is interesting in buying, along with other partners, Maguire’s interests in Downtown Los Angeles office properties for about $750 million.The Wall Street Journal reported the offer, citing a letter from Brookfield to Maguire that the newspaper had seen.”It’s hard to know how Maquire’s board is going to respond to Brookfield,” David AuBuchon, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., told CPN this morning. “It seems like an adequate, though not stellar, offer. There’s really only one other current office trade in the same market to compare it to. Brookfield is offering a little less on a square foot basis than that transaction, which is trading for about $440-$450 per square foot.”AuBuchon noted that Maquire still has the option of trying to wait out current economic conditions in hopes of striking a better deal later. “They could conclude that now isn’t the best time to sell and say ‘Thank you, not now’ to Brookfield,” he said.News of the offer came during the same week that Robert Maguire III, chairman & CEO of Maguire Properties, formally expressed an interest in taking the company private with an offer of about $21 per share (as of this morning, the company is trading at about $16.40 per share). A special committee of directors, set up in recent months to ascertain how to deal with the company’s high debt levels incurred last year with the purchase of an office portfolio from Blackstone, declined to act on Mr. Maguire’s “expression of interest,” however.”The expression of interest is not currently actionable for consideration by the special committee, including assessing the adequacy of the nominal value for shareholders ascribed to the plan and the realistic prospect and timing of the value of the plan ultimately being delivered to shareholders,” the committee noted in a filing earlier this week with the SEC.