Towers of Debt

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$29.95 CANADA $24.95 u.s.A.
TOWERS OFDEBT
"Donald Trump was chopped Iiver when compared with the Reichmann brothers," wrote a business reporter in Newsweek. At its peak, according to Business Week, the Reichmanns' family company Olympia and York, was "the largest real estate empire on earth." The extraordinary transformation of the Reichmann financial colossus into "the world's biggest private bankruptcy filing" {Time) is the subject of Peter Foster's dramatic saga of an empire's rise and fall.
Foster's story takes in the legendary Reichmann family history: their flight across Europe ahead of the Nazis, their residence in wartime Tangier, and their establishment of a modest tdle business in a Toronto suburb. From that tiny base, Paul Reichmann and his brothers, Albert and Ralph, went on to a series of real estate developments each more spectacular than the last: the pathbreaking construction of Canada's tallest building, First Canadian Place; the "deal of the century" purchase... Tovább

Fülszöveg

$29.95 CANADA $24.95 u.s.A.
TOWERS OFDEBT
"Donald Trump was chopped Iiver when compared with the Reichmann brothers," wrote a business reporter in Newsweek. At its peak, according to Business Week, the Reichmanns' family company Olympia and York, was "the largest real estate empire on earth." The extraordinary transformation of the Reichmann financial colossus into "the world's biggest private bankruptcy filing" {Time) is the subject of Peter Foster's dramatic saga of an empire's rise and fall.
Foster's story takes in the legendary Reichmann family history: their flight across Europe ahead of the Nazis, their residence in wartime Tangier, and their establishment of a modest tdle business in a Toronto suburb. From that tiny base, Paul Reichmann and his brothers, Albert and Ralph, went on to a series of real estate developments each more spectacular than the last: the pathbreaking construction of Canada's tallest building, First Canadian Place; the "deal of the century" purchase of eight Manhattan skyscrapers in 1977; and the development of New York's architecturally acclaimed World Financial Center.
At the center of these spectacular developments was Paul Reichmann. He was devout, hardworking, and modest. His word was his bond, and on the strength of his word, banks on three continents feil over one another to lend him huge sums of money in the belief that everything Paul Reichmann touched turned to gold.
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Even in the late 1980s, however, there were signs that the Reichmanns were headed for a fall as precipitous as their rise. Foster provides an insider's view of the convoluted and litigious takeovers of oil giant Gulf Canada and liquor and resources conglomerate Hiram Walker. He details the bizarre flirtation with the mercurial developer Robert Campeau that cost Olympia and York $600 million. And he plots, finally, Paul Reichmann's plunge into London's dockland development, Canary Wharf, the world's most ambitious real-estate project. Conceived as a monument that would change the shape of one of the world's great cities, it instead became a $3 billion symbol of financial hubris and feckless lending.
Peter Foster has been a long-time observer of the Reichmann story. Towers of Debt, a completely revised and updated édition of The Master Builders, which was published in 1986, takes the Reichmann story to its tragic conclusion.
Peter Foster was born in London, England, in 1947. He has an honors degree in economics from Christ's College, Cambridge. He worked for The Financial Times of London as a business reporter from 1973 to 1976, then emigrated to Canada to write for The Financial Post, where he became a senior editor. He left the Post in 1979 in order to write his first book, Blue-Eyed Sheiks, which subsequently became a number-one bestseller. He is currently a contributing editor of Saturday Night and Canadian Business magazines. Foster has won more than a dozen national magazine awards, including the 1991 Canadian Magazine Award for business writing.
Jacket photograph of Canary Wharf: Tony Stone Worldwide; Paul Reichmann: Peter Eglinton/Toronto Star
Jacket design: Scott Richardson
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