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Annie L. being sued ...
Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Chris Large, Photographer
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Okotoks | AB | Canada | Posted: 7:10 PM on 04.06.10 |
->> Hhhhmmmmm ....... I'm now thinking my debts for car payments, lease on my laptop, and my taxes (thankfully no mortgage) for the last year are all well under $15k....maybe being not famous has it's own rewards. Just a thought......
Chris |
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Jamie Roper, Photographer
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Boulder | CO | United States | Posted: 8:50 PM on 04.06.10 |
| ->> Fame and hubris are easily confused. |
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Michael Fischer, Photographer
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Spencer | Ia | USA | Posted: 10:58 PM on 04.06.10 |
->> Recommendation: Don't be standing underneath this when the rope breaks.
Annie Leibovitz is a poster child for why some of us advocate taking a few less photo courses and a whole lot more business courses. She's playing hardball with financial professionals and she's going to get her ass handed to her. UGLY.
This is a bankruptcy that will happen. They want her archive and they will get it. This woman is SOOOOOOOOOO screwed. Hopefully she's socked $35M away in a secret bank account in a secret Swiss bank account, but I doubt it. |
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John Korduner, Photographer
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Baton Rouge | LA | United States | Posted: 2:23 AM on 04.07.10 |
->> I'd like to see the details, but my inclination is that she either received an unsecured credit line due to her stature, or she was loaned money against property that lenders didn't realize (or research) was already secured by previous lenders...because of her celebrity.
All the creditors are now scrambling for a place in line. It's reasonable to believe there's a bunch of star-struck VC's who feel cheated. |
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Mark Peters, Photographer
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Highland | IL | USA | Posted: 8:32 AM on 04.07.10 |
->> John,
You haven't done your homework on this one.
Seasoned venture capitalists of this stature ($39 billion invested) don't hand out $40 million without doing their due diligence just because of her celebrity. The also make sure they have their claws deep into the client. This is the same group that bought the loan on Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch, part of the group buying First Republic Bank and has holdings world wide in a variety of assets.
The Colony Capital loan/management agreement left them as the sole creditor, so I'm not seeing dual collateralization occurring either.
This group specializes in extracting value from distressed assets. |
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John Korduner, Photographer
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Baton Rouge | LA | United States | Posted: 11:55 AM on 04.07.10 |
| ->> No research done, but the Neverland bailout doesn't materialize if Michael Jones owned the property. I think they're still sitting on a vacant lot with a bunch of missing rides...and if that's the case, it was a poor investment. |
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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McAllen | TX | USA | Posted: 11:57 AM on 04.07.10 |
| ->> The first rule of Fight Club is "Don't Get $40 Million In Debt." |
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Steven Mullensky, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Port Townsend | WA. | USA | Posted: 12:31 PM on 04.07.10 |
| ->> This seems like a Tiger Woods thread. |
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David Seelig, Photographer
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Hailey | ID | USA | Posted: 12:36 PM on 04.07.10 |
| ->> None of us really know what is going on, to say anything definitive is short sighted. I wish Annie the best in holding on to her work. |
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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McAllen | TX | USA | Posted: 5:45 PM on 04.07.10 |
->> "This seems like a Tiger Woods thread."
I hear that his biggest problem at the Masters is going to be that, because of his intensive therapy, he's only going to be able to play one hole. |
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Chris Large, Photographer
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Okotoks | AB | Canada | Posted: 11:20 PM on 04.07.10 |
->> Jim
Ouch !! |
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Willis Glassgow, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Florence | SC | USA | Posted: 7:51 AM on 04.16.10 |
| ->> Go back quite a few years and talk to some of Annie's former assistants. They probably number in the thousands by now. When I was an assistant many years ago, she would be looking for someone new to help because she couldn't keep anyone. She was a notorious fit thrower. Screaming and swearing at assistants in front of clients, throwing film backs, etc. She made many enemies in the business and was not liked by most. So....how is this pertinent in this thread??????.....What comes around, goes around. I'm not shedding any tears for Annie, just learning from her mistakes. |
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Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 3:51 PM on 04.16.10 |
->> Michael- Actually this all started because she had a fantastic business idea, but it all went horribly wrong. I'll admit, I got bored so I started researching this last week and poked around the internet and tax records and this whole mess started on the corner of West 11th and Greenwich in 2002.
http://www.housingwatch.com/2010/03/09/annie-leibovitz-keeps-her-homes/
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-08/colony-to-take-over-leibovitz-d...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=ae3DhoSniEvo
So what we take away from all of this is that she has three brownstones and a 228 acre estate. What they neglect to mention is this:
http://www.gvshp.org/leibovitzdemo.html
And that whole mess right there, 7-8 years ago, is what started this whole ball rolling. In a nutshell, she bought the two desperate (adjoining) brownstones for 4.15M which is a sweet deal to be honest. There is a good chance she was able to buy them cash considering her VF contracts but let's assume she was a normal buyer and financed, oh, 50% at 6.5%, (this does not include the equity refinancing to do the million dollar or renovation since who knows how she financed that originally).
So in the process of working on these two properties (news reports suggest she was planning to combine them in to one property) the contractors did non-permit work, and in the process completely screw up a foundation wall that supports her building as well as the building/residence on the other side of the wall. This causes major structural damage resulting in collapsed chimneys, floor and ceiling displacement, "stair-stepping", exterior wall disintegration, etc. For a brownstone this is considered catastrophic damage since the exterior walls are what support the building.
Okay so then the neighbors are basically forced to move and they sue Annie for damages including the loss of their home, which she now is forced to buy - for 15M - plus all those legal fees which in Manhattan are about a car payment per hour... For a no-cash down BMW.
During all of that, construction is forced to halt and (for reasons I just can't understand) the building is never sealed up or winterized. So over a very wet winter the interior of the build(s) is exposed to the elements and suffer water damage on an already precarious structure. Depending on how bad the damage is, this could result in completely gutting the buildings which then turns your 1M renovation in to a 5-6M renovation, and all the while, the building is not earning income to pay down it's debt.... The property sat like that for a full year before work continued.
So the original 5M project has ballooned to probably 24M at this point and that's just the principal, forget the interest on all of that - as well as property taxes on three buildings.
If you've ever seen Tom Hanks' "The Money Pit", this is basically what she was going through on a much more costly scale. There was no "Sorry Miz L. but we gotta pull up dis flowa and its gonna cost youz 20 G's." It was more like "Yea we gotta gut dis whole b**** down to da ground and go ahead and bend ova while youz at it".
What I've failed to uncover however is if the contractors were licensed/bonded and if are liable for any of that damage, the delays and even the legal agreement to purchase the neighboring property. There isn't even a hint at the idea in any article I've read.
What I do keep reading however is that her properties have a combined worth of 40-80M (depending on what source you read) and that the sale of them could get her out from under the current debt and ergo, save her archive.
So this raises a veeeeery interesting predicament for Annie and it no doubt has her stressed out because all eyes are watching... Does she sell her house and properties to rescue her images, or does she let go of the images to rescue her houses?
I honestly and truly think she would rather have the properties since they only stand to keep growing in value while (as we know all to well) licensing rates on her archive slowly decline due to the way the industry is moving.
If that is indeed the avenue she takes then it's actually a brilliant business move at the cost of looking like a sell out. Heck when I'm sixty and nearing retirement, if I can get a few million bucks for all the NFL stuff I've shot (figure it would be about 4,000,000 photos by then), I'd be silly not to take it.
take it. |
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Michael Fischer, Photographer
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Spencer | Ia | USA | Posted: 10:55 PM on 04.17.10 |
->> Thomas, I read the links.Thank you. She did well on one investment in real estate but got burned badly on the brownstones. Not having the expertise can really be expensive...
I'd agree - she might be better off giving up the archives if she can get the real estate to work. BIG IF, however. |
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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McAllen | TX | USA | Posted: 12:39 PM on 10.25.10 |
->> "...one of the 10 “master sets” of 157 of her prints that have been offered privately at an asking price of more than $3m per set..."
Yikes! I don't know what's more disturbing from that FT article, the fact that they're asking (but not getting) $3million for a "set" of AL's photos or the fact that Cindy Sherman actually gets $2million for hers. |
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