The Commercial Observer’s Power 100 Gala, Minute by Minute, Drink for Drink
By Daniel Geiger June 19, 2012 5:08 pm
reprints7:31: Ofer Yardeni, Bob Knakal and Bob’s beautiful wife Cynthia stop to say hello to Jared Kushner who is chatting with a swarm of guests next to his wife Ivanka Trump. “We have lunch in a few weeks,” Seth Pinsky, president of the New York Economic Development Corporation and number 30 on the list, says to Mr. Kushner. “I want to bounce a few ideas off you.”
7:40: Stu Loeser, Mayor Bloomberg’s press extraoridinaire, types away at his Blackberry. With his hands full, he manages to shake The CO’s hand with two fingers before going back to his phone. “I just heard about a real estate deal from a guy that I had heard earlier and I saw him again and he was talking about it with someone else… anyway, it was good intel.”
7:46: Frank Sciame is ranting about interest rates. “You can get a loan for practically a zero percent interest rate but you have to put
in 40 percent equity and who has that?” Mr. Sciame says. “You wind up making up for it by taking a 20 percent mezz loan, I’d rather just
have the banks start making regular loans again.” Gregory Fierce a banker with U.S. Bank turns to The CO. “If Frank wasn’t acting like
the world was coming apart I’d think he was sick,” Mr. Fierce says.
7:55: Shawn Rosenthal, an executive with Ackman Ziff, riffs on Bob Knakal’s golf clubs. “Those things looked like they were from the 1970s Bob,” Mr. Rosenthal jokes, referring to a recent game they played. “But Bob’s a great golfer.”
8:20: Michael Lehrman, a top executive at BGC Partners who has overseen the company’s acquisition of Newmark (NMRK) and Grubb & Ellis, chats on the Core Club’s outdoor deck space. He explains some of the key tenets of time management he’s picked up through the years. “We all do business with the people we love. If someone doesn’t love you, they just like you, you better come to them with a great idea. But if they don’t know you, don’t bother because they’re going to want to do business with the people they love.” Fair enough. So what if the city put out a big RFP because it wanted to dispose of 10 million square feet? “I don’t anyone at the city so I wouldn’t bother. Going after something like that is like trying to hit the lottery.” So he would just let a huge opportunity like that slip away? “No, I would buy a broker that the city loved.”
8:45: The party is winding down and Christopher Barnes, president of The Observer Media Group and one of the brainchilds behind The CO is hanging by the bar. “So… did you have a good time?” He asks.
