Downtown Los Angeles skyline boss Robert Maguire, fighting to keep control of the real estate investment trust he founded, on Monday made a complicated offer to buy the company and sell off many of its signature holdings, perhaps including the tallest building in the West.
But his offer to buy back Maguire Properties Inc. was quickly rebuffed by key members of the board of directors, who said the proposal had too many ifs.
Monday's back-and-forth was the latest turn in an unfolding saga over the future of the company. It said in December that it would consider a sale after it came under pressure from activist stockholders who wanted Robert Maguire to relinquish at least some control.
At stake is a collection of downtown's best-known office towers built and acquired over decades by the wily and colorful developer, who is well known not just for his skyscrapers but also for forging community alliances in philanthropy and labor relations.
The Bunker Hill showpieces include the 72-story U.S. Bank Tower, the region's tallest, the Gas Company Tower and Wells Fargo Tower. The company's other downtown buildings include 777 Tower on Figueroa Street, designed by architect Cesar Pelli.
Maguire has been downtown's most prominent office developer since the 1980s, but his buildings are now in the hands of Maguire Properties, which he founded in 1996 and took public in 2003. He also is the largest stockholder.
Now the company is under siege in an unforgiving market for real estate, and Maguire finds the direction of his creation in the hands of an independent committee of directors. He is not among them, and his employment agreement with the company expires in June.
Shares in the company fell 3% to $16.62 on Monday on the news that Maguire's offer of about $745 million would not be considered by the committee. In a company statement, the committee said Maguire's offer was "not currently actionable" because his proposal "is subject to numerous, substantial contingencies and questions."
Maguire's plan called for a lot of leverage. He said he would sell most of the company's buildings outside of Orange County to help pay for the acquisition. Some of the nation's largest real estate investors have already expressed interest in buying many of the company's trophy buildings.
Selling properties in Los Angeles and San Diego counties would leave Maguire with substantial holdings in Orange County, where he made a big investment in 2007 as part of a nearly $3-billion purchase of a portfolio of office buildings from New York investment firm Blackstone Group.
