by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
After years of brick-and-mortar meltdown, the Pandemic. Desperate measures are now required.
Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners obtained approval from bankruptcy court this week to buy the retail and operating assets of J.C. Penney, which had filed for bankruptcy in May. Simon is the largest mall REIT [SPG] in the US. Brookfield Property Partners is an entity of Brookfield Asset Management, a huge complex Canadian asset manager and PE firm with numerous entities. Brookfield Properties became a huge mall landlord after it acquired in 2018 the mall REIT GCP, the second-largest mall landlord in the US. In 2010, after General Growth Properties, as it was known, had filed for bankruptcy, Brookfield provided funding in return for an equity stake. In 2018, when GCP was wobbling back toward bankruptcy, Brookfield bought the remainder of the REIT for $15 billion.