11 February 2008
Hotel Lawyers looking for liquidity in hotel finance. As Congress reached a $789.5 billion compromise on the almost stimulus bill, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner testified for a second day in front of a Senate panel and was pressed to reveal more details on how the Administration’s program would work.
It still looks like a “black box” where no one knows what’s going on inside. This won’t help solve the problem.
10 February 2008
Hotel lawyers on the continuing financial crisis. A few minutes ago, on a 61-37 vote, the U.S. Senate approved an $838 billion package to attack the financial crisis. Negotiations will now start to strike a compromise with the House.
Meanwhile, Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s greatly anticipated unveiling of the administration’s bailout plan details left the markets and many expert’s flat. Expecting more detail on exactly how the plan would work, “investors greeted Mr. Geithner’s speech with dismay and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 300 points” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s what we know.
9 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers contemplating the cleanup ahead. Today and tomorrow may either mark a turning point for economic recovery or just another ledge we bounce off before we plunge into a deeper abyss.
6 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers: It’s not getting any better yet. The New York Times announced this morning that almost 600,000 jobs were lost in January 2009, bringing total unemployment in the U.S. to 7.6%, the highest level in 16 years. The government also revised estimates of job losses for prior periods, adding another 400,000 job losses to prior estimates.
This brings the total job losses since December 2007, when the recession began, to more than 3.6 million jobs. Just to put that in perspective, the 2007 census said the entire population of Los Angeles was only 3.8 million people. So our job losses over the last 13 months are now almost as big as the City of Los Angeles.
What are the ramifications of that for the hospitality industry?
5 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers at “The conference of doom and gloom”
The ALIS conference this year was as glum as I can recall. You would have to go back to 1991 and 1992 at the old UCLA and NYU conferences to find a similar mood. Compared to the record attendance of more than 3,200 at last year’s ALIS conference, the attendance of 1,700 was a good showing, but obviously reflected a lot of cutbacks.
2 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers with the pulse of the hotel industry from ALIS. Mark Woodworth of PKF Consulting shared his latest analysis of the hotel industry with us, as well as his slides from the ALIS conference. The picture is not pretty. Mark says, that if you’re waiting for the recovery, the key word is “PROTRACTED.” Here are the details.
15 January 2009
Jim Abrams brings decades of hotel experience and relationships to the team
Jim Abrams, a hotel industry leader and former CH&LA President, has joined JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group®. In addition to bringing decades of hotel experience and relationships to the team, he looks forward to contributing to the Group’s work on hotel management agreements, labor union and employment issues, and ADA issues, as well as expanding the Group’s capabilities in legislative and regulatory affairs.
5 January 2009
To say the least, the last year has been a very “interesting” one. Here are our picks for “The Best from HotelLawBlog.com” from 2008. There are some classic pieces here!
31 December 2008
Hotel Lawyers on lessons from The Crash of 2008.
2008 will go down as a terrible year in many regards. Global economies have come to the precipice of disaster. The Dow had its worst year since 1931 — down 34% for the year, representing the loss of more than $7 trillion in wealth. Many trillions more evaporated from the value of both residential and commercial real estate. Consumer confidence is at its lowest point since they began keeping records. The unthinkable has happened with the fallen pillars of Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG. Even GE couldn’t sell its commercial paper until the Fed stepped in to buy it. And then there is Bernard Madoff who bilked some of the most sophisticated investors in the world out an estimated $50 billion.
What was wrong with the mortgage mess, CMBS meltdown and Madoff?
17 December 2008
“Out of the Panic and into Opportunities of a Lifetime” Is Theme for the
19th Annual Meet the Money® Conference
Hotel Financing Summit Set for May 5-7, 2009
LOS ANGELES, Calif., December 16, 2008–With the recent announcement of a full-blown recession, officials of Meet the Money®, the annual hotel financing summit, today announced the theme for its 2009 conference: “Out of the Panic and into Opportunities of a Lifetime.” The 19th annual event will be held May 5-7, 2009, at the Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles Hotel near LAX in California.