Is PNC mystery buyer for Capmark? Updates
Speculation over who'll buy troubled Capmark Financial Group's Horsham loan business - and whether they'll keep hundreds of local workers employed
Updated: Capmark Financial Group Inc. of Horsham, the giant commercial real estate lender that filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware last month, agreed earlier this year that, if it went bankrupt, it would be acquired by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Leucadia National Corp. ("Berkadia") for a premium of about half a billion dollars, unless someone offered more.
Yesterday, Capmark lawyer Michael Kessler said a rival potential owner - a company "already in the loan servicing business" - has proposed negotiating a higher price, as Bloomberg and the Inquirer noted here (scroll to fourth item). This potential owner, who wasn't identified, "does not plan to hire Capmark's servicing employees," Bloomberg reporter Steve Church wrote. Capmark's assets will be offered at auction Nov. 20.
Who's the mystery buyer? Shmuel Vasser, of Philadelphia-based Dechert, has been in court representing PNC Financial Group's Midland Loan Services commercial loan-servicing unit in Kansas City, one of Capmark's two surviving competitors (the other is Wells Fargo & Co.) and asking questions about the pending auction.
PNC's interest has some folks at Capmark worried because, since PNC owns Midland, it isn't likely to need the several hundred people who still work at Capmark in Horsham. Besides jobs, public money is at stake here: Both Capmark and Midland service apartment loans for government-supported Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which face reorganization and, probably, more federal bailouts next year.
PNC spokesman Brian Goerke says his company doesn't comment on merger speculation. PNC, the fifth-largest U.S. bank, is backed by around $7.6 billion in federal Troubled Asset Replacement Program assets, and has been an acquirer of troubled companies like Cleveland's National City Bank.