New York Times Blogs – Sure, it’s tough being a journalist these days. But if you think the news business is in trouble, try being a journalist turned financier. Some of the reporters who have left their ink-stained professions for the high-paying world of finance haven’t had it easy either.
The latest is Rob Speyer, scion of the Tishman Speyer real-estate empire. As the WSJ reported on Wednesday, a former reporter at The New York Observer and New York Daily News, Speyer is being groomed to take over the New York real estate firm, which recently defaulted on debt tied to a big portfolio of office buildings it bought in Washington, D.C. The firm also is under stress from its top-of-the-market purchase of Archstone Smith, a high-end-apartment landlord, and the Manhattan apartment complexes of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town. Speyer tells the WSJ that despite some problems, Tishman Speyer has a “good track record” and $2 billion in liquidity.
