Yes it does. I would argue that the recession we are in is at this point a matter as much as of uncertainty as anything else. No data, no confidence, no certainty.
And that is what David's Simon's latest complaint is on the GGP deal. According to this post at Traffic Court, they've signed the NDA but are not getting any data. No files, no war room access, no nothing?
You can't get a deal done without due diligence. People scurrying around looking at malls and leases and title policies and abstracts and environmental studies, and preparing summaries for the bigwigs to chew on about the risks of a given property. I could go on all day, having been in a few of these clusterbombs over the years. (The one nice thing is that these days the due diligence materials are usually put into a secure online site, whereas in the old days you had to travel to the HQ and pore through boxes upon boxes and drawer upon drawer of junk in what is usually called a war room.)
We know one thing: GGP management is not keen to Simon buying the company. So let's just say the lack of war room type materials is not exactly a shock. Now I haven't looked to see what GGP plans to do other than some kind of auction, I gather, but perhaps everything will start to coalesce after tomorrow's court hearing on the reorganization plan. (We do know that GGP plans to relist itself at the NYSE.)
PS: Here is a Reuters piece about the whole process -- apparently a 60 day due diligence period for the bidders -- and what people in the know are saying about the company and the deal.
