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J.P. Morgan & Co. is advising New York City on its $102 million sale of the U.N. Plaza Hotel to Regal Hotels International Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong company.
The transaction, expected to close in July, is part of an initiative launched in 1994 by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to privatize city-owned businesses through the Economic Development Corp.
J.P. Morgan is also advising the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on the possible privatization of the World Trade Center.
J.P. Morgan has been aggressively mining the real estate industry for the last three years. In 1994, the bank brought managing director Jon Zehner back from London to "make real estate a 'client' group." Until then, real estate had been more of a "product" group.
"Real estate has always been an asset class," Mr. Zehner said. "In the last...