There's an old saying in deal-making: "Buying a company is easy. The hard part is making it work once you own it."
That's the situation for Blackstone's star real estate guru, Jonathan Gray. He won the bidding for Equity Office Properties (NYSE: EOP), which cost about $39 billion.
For a deal like this, there is often a big party.But that's not what Gray did. Apparently, he is constantly scared that the deal will fail. After all, the last similar mega deal was the buyout of RJR Nabisco (back in 1989), which almost imploded.
Interestingly enough, while Gray was bidding for EOP, he was also planning and even negotiating the exit strategy. In fact, he is already unloading properties so as to pay down the enormous debt.
Moreover, he's a big-time Chicago Bears fan and despite having tickets to the Super Bowl, he instead opted to spend his time wheeling and dealing to get the EOP deal done.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.
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