New York, NY – Fertilizer Billionaire Buys Buildings His Way, in Cash

New York, NY – It is rare when a buyer pays all cash for a real estate property, and even rarer when the dollar figure is in excess of $300 million. But that was the case last week when a fertilizer tycoon, Alex Rovt, acquired a majority stake in 14 Wall Street, the 1-million-square-foot office building across from the New York Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan.

“I was looking at several different office buildings to buy, but with this one I was successful and was able to buy out all of the creditors,” said Mr. Rovt, 59. He has set aside another $300 million to $400 million, he said, to make additional residential and commercial buys in Manhattan.

While there have been previous all-cash purchases of large office towers in New York City, brokers said the $303 million price tag was certainly noteworthy. The strategy is not unusual, however, for Mr. Rovt.

“I haven’t known him to use financing in any of his deals,” said Matthew Lesser, a vice president at Leslie J. Garfield & Company, who has represented Mr. Rovt in several New York real estate transactions. Mr. Lesser was a consultant to Mr. Rovt on 14 Wall Street; he did not have a broker.

As part of the deal for 14 Wall Street, also known as the Bankers Trust Building, Mr. Rovt paid off at a discount all of the remaining debt. At face value, that included a $145 million first mortgage that was scheduled to come due in May, $100 million in mezzanine debt held by Brookfield Office Properties and additional mezzanine debt totaling $75 million held by Shorenstein Properties.

Mr. Rovt, a native of Ukraine who is now a United States citizen and president of a fertilizer company, the IBE Trade Corporation, is ranked 372nd in Forbes’s list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. with an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion. From humble Jewish beginnings — his father was the manager of a knitting factory and his mother was a housewife — he came to America on a work visa in 1984. With a Ph.D. in international economics from the Lvov State University of Trade and Economics, he worked his way through various jobs here, including a stint at his uncle’s deli, before joining the privately held IBE Trade Corporation. There, he leveraged his Russian contacts and his ambition to climb the corporate ladder, eventually taking control of the business.

Read full article at NY Times