General Growth Plans Return to NYSE

March 2, 2010
By Allison Landa, News Editor

Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons user ralphunden

General Growth Properties is looking to get back to where it once belonged.

The beleaguered shopping-center REIT, which declared bankruptcy last year, has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange. In an announcement made Tuesday, chief executive officer Adam Metz said: “We are pleased to again be eligible for listing on the New York Stock Exchange. … Trading again on the NYSE will mark an important milestone in GGP’s restructuring process.”

It is expected that GGP will begin trading on March 5 under the symbol GGP. In the interim, the firm’s common stock will continue to trade in the over-the-counter securities market run by Pink OTC Markets under the symbol GGWPQ.

These have hardly been boring times for the nation’s second-largest shopping-center owner. GGP recently struck a deal to get funding from Brookfield Asset Management, but would-be suitor Simon Property as well as the company’s creditors complain that this poses a conflict of interest as it blocks GGP from considering better offers than Brookfield’s.

According to Reuters, Simon chairman and chief executive said at the Citi 2010 Global Property CEO Conference that General Growth has shared no data despite signing an agreement to do so. Simon has made a $10 billion bid for GGP, which has thus far been rebuffed amidst a harsh war of words.

GGP currently has ownership interest in or management responsibility for more than 200 regional shopping malls in 43 states, with a portfolio totaling 200 million square feet of retail space and including more than 24,000 retail stores nationwide.