Grubb & Ellis files Chapter 11

As part of a prepackaged bankruptcy, the commercial real estate company will sell nearly all its assets to BGC Partners, a brokerage firm that broke away from Cantor Fitzgerald in 2004. In its filing, Grubb & Ellis, listed $150 million in assets and $167 million in debts. From the NYT:

The company was hurt by "the 2007-2009 meltdown of the financial markets," Michael J. Rispoli, the company's chief financial officer, wrote in the petition, and by an ill-fated merger in 2007 with NNN Realty Advisors at the top of the real estate market. Revenue in the company's transaction services business plunged to $173 million in 2009 from $312 million in 2007, it said in the filing. "The combined effect of these adverse economic conditions and liabilities and losses associated with disposed businesses severely strained Grubb & Ellis's liquidity and hampered its ability to continue as a going concern," Mr. Rispoli wrote.

From the LAT:

Grubb & Ellis was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange in January after its share prices fell below $1. The company's travails have taken a toll on its workers, said broker Neil Resnick, who worked for Grubb & Ellis for 11 years before leaving in August to open the Los Angeles office of Avison Young, a Canadian competitor. "It saddens me terribly that they have had to endure significant uncertainty," he said. Last month he hired two former Grubb & Ellis brokers, Joseph Gabbaian and Martin McDermott.

This is a relationship business, and the loss of high-performing brokers pretty much doomed the Santa Ana-based company. The operation had been on the block for close to a year, but no suitable bidders emerged.