Quant hedge fund DE Shaw, which recently laid off a significant portion of it’s real estate division, is getting some ribbing in the press for the partial cause of those layoffs: the recent foreclosure on a tract of New Mexico desert twice the size of Boston. Shaw put up $100 million of the quarter-billion purchase price, and needs to start coughing up payments quickly or risk losing their entire investment. Given the size of the blunder, the teasing has been warranted, if overdone, but it will only get worse once the rest of the blogosphere finds the best piece of (unintentional) comedy in the whole transaction.
In a four page press release that reads like DE Shaw had just defeated Santa Anna’s army and manifested their own destiny, the deal is extolled as “one of the most significant land transactions in recent history,” by Shaw’s real estate guru — one that could “reshape…potentially the entire Southwest.”
Bubble-era quote schadenfreude isn’t new, but it’s still fun…
<none>