TPG's Kelvin Davis: Corus Assets Not "Ghost Towns"
The FDIC announced yesterday that the assets of failed Corus Bank will be sold to a private equity consortium that includes Starwood Capital Group, TPG Capital, WL Ross and Perry Capital. The firms will pay $554 million for a 40% stake, or around 60 cents on the dollar (FDIC retains a 60% equity stake). The bank’s deposits were sold separately in an earlier auction (TPG and Starwood began looking at Corus three or four months ago, before a decision was made to do the deposit/asset split). I spent some time on the phone last night with TPG senior partner Kelvin Davis, whose real estate experience includes the co-founding of Colony Capital. Most interesting was his assessment of the assets that TPG now holds. A lot of them are luxury condo properties, in all stages of development. I referred to them as “ghost towns,” which Davis said was unfair:
