March 14, 2025 • 27 mins
Katie and Matt discuss appraisal arbitrage, fighting and wrestling, official worries about private credit liquidity and indoor skiing in New Jersey.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
What if Matt and I talked super fast, but then
you slowed it down to make the podcast longer.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
You could pitch me down, so I sounded like this. God,
wouldn't that be good?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
You sound like a fancy man.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I am a fancy man.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hello, and welcome to The Money Stuff Podcast. You're a
weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money.
I'm Matt Levin and I write The Money Stuff colmed
for Blueberg Opinion.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and
an anchor for Bloomberg Television.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
What are we talking about today, Katie?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
We're going to talk about wrestling and fighting, and we're
going to talk about private credit ETF liquidity I frequently
visited topic on this podcast. And then we're going to
talk about the mirage of the American Dream. Yes, exactly,
So let's go right into it. This is complicated. We're
(01:02):
talking about Endeavor, we're talking about TKL, we're talking about
Silver Lake. Can you explain first all the ownership structure
of what we're talking about?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, So Endeavor is like a talent agency slash media behemoth.
It's like Ari Emmanuel's talent Agency that became a giant thing.
And one reason it's a giant thing is that it
owned WWE World Wrestling Entertainment, which then merged with UFC
the Ultimate Fighting Championship to form a giant fighting complex.
And that fighting complex is called TKO is the name
(01:31):
of the company, and it's now a public company, and
Davor owns a little more than half of it, And
so Endeavor is a company that owns a little bit
more than half of another company. They're both public. Endeavor's public.
TKO as public, Endeavor is like seventy percent owned by
silver Lake, the private equity firm. Right, silver Lake has
this ladder. It wants to take Endeavor private. Let's buy
the shares that it doesn't already own, and it negotiated
(01:53):
a merger with the board of directors and it agreed
to pay twenty seven to fifty per share for the
remainder of Endeavor. That happened like a year ago. It's
they're working to get closing. And what has happened in
the interim is that the stock price of TKO has
gone way out. So what that means is that in
Deeva runs more than half of TKO has become a
(02:15):
lot more valuable. That means that Endeavor has become a
lot more valuable, or you would think that would be
the case. And so all the shareholders of Endeavor who
are not silver Lake say, well, you agreed to pay
twenty seven to fifty a year ago. The company is
more valuable. Now we want more money. Silver Like I
said no, they agreed to the deal twenty seven to fifteen.
That's what we're doing. And the shareholders are revolting. They're
(02:37):
saying they're going to demand appraisal, which is like in Delaware,
if you don't like a merger price, you can go
to a judge and say this was an unfair, too
low price. I'd like more, and the judge can say yes,
here you go. In recent years, it has been tough
to win appraisal cases because usually the judges are like no,
for complicated reasons you can get into. But here it's
(02:57):
an unusually easy case because they're like, look, most of
this company's asked are this public company. The shares have
gone up, so we know it's worth more than the
great deal, so you should give us more money.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I have two questions here one is that I mean,
you write and you just said that it used to
be easier to win appraisal crisis. You wrote that it
changed in twenty seventeen, which seems I can't like, I
can't think of a catalyst, like why did it change
in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
There's kind of two points here. So one is like
Delaware judges or experts in corporate law and banking and
mergers and see themselves as being expert in like knowing
how companies work. And so it used to be you'd
go to a Dellary judge and say this company is
worth more than the acquirer paid for it, and you'd
present like your discattered cash flow model, and the acquirer
would present their model, and there'd be an argument, and
(03:44):
the judge would think about all of this and be like,
you're right, it's worth more. And people got kind of
annoyed with that and said, why should a judge get
to decide what the company is worth? And what happened
is that, like twenty seventeen is like the turning point
people point to you because it's a big case. The
dell by a like Michael Debob Dell a judge said no,
(04:06):
he underpaid for it, and he orded more money. And
then the Delaware Supreme Court reversed that on appeal and said, basically,
like you should give more weight to objective facts, like
the company ran a merger process and the highest bid
was what it got right, or the company's stock trades
in the market and you can sort of look at
the stock price and say that's a pretty good indicator
(04:28):
of what the company is worth. So basically since Dell,
there's been less of an emphasis on Delaware judges listening
to arguments about what a company is worth and like
making their own decision, and more of an emphasis on like,
what the market says the company is worth is like,
most of the time pretty good evidence. So it's not
like you can never have appraise anymore. It's like it's
(04:49):
just like a little bit like a higher bar to
prove that the company is worth something other than what
the market says it's worth or what the merger says
it's worth. And that's what makes this case unusual because
here the disgruntled shareholders aren't saying, oh, we want you
to take our evidence of value rather than the market's
evidence of value, saying no, no, like the market price says
(05:10):
this company is worth more than then silver Lake is
paying for it. Yeah, and silver Lake is the one saying, no,
the market price is fake.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well do you say that this is a pretty straightforward
case of appraisal. But couldn't you make the case that
silver Lake just made a good deal here that they
saw that this company is It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
That doesn't matter, Like, yes, absolutely in the ordinary course
of things, Like they agreed this deal. If you're like, Okay,
you agreed on a deal a year ago, and since
then the market has gone up, you should get the
benefit of yeah, and like, right, as a matter of
like merger practice, endeavor shouldn't be able to back out
of the deal now because the market went up, right, Yeah,
But that's not how appraisal works. Like appraisal is just
(05:47):
like a thing in the law, and the thing says,
you know, the shareholders are entitled to the fair value
of the company at the time of the closing of
the merger, so like technically they're entitled to this.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
It's just like this is like a weird element of
law that people like not to think that much about.
Like the difference between signing and closing but here the
company has gone up a lot between.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Signing, and actually it's gone up so much that I
did some reporting for this podcast. Usually I just show up,
but in this case, I asked KEITHA. Rong Goanathan of
Bloomberg Intelligence basically, why have TKA's shares gone up so
much since Endeavor agreed to that deal with silver Lake
It was in April twenty twenty four. Her answer was,
they have a big UFC media rights deal with Disney
(06:25):
that is expiring at the end of twenty twenty five.
There's reports that are suggesting that they're asking for a
doubling of yearly fees to a billion dollars, which would
be substantial. There's also a little bit of a Trump effect,
not to sure gaft.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
You know, it seems like the sort of thing that
would thrive.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, he's shown up at wrestling matches. I thought that
was a little bit interesting because there's no one closer
to Donald Trump right now than Elon Musk, and Elon
Musk obviously has had the opposite experience in the public markets,
at least with Tesla.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, right, it's interesting, Like you think about like the
stereotypical Tesla buyer from three years ago, and how they
would feel about it. I mus, then you think about
like the stereotypical wrestling thing. Yeah, that's a slightly different.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Demographic, that's true, it's totally different markets. I just think
about that too. We had Carson Block on Bloomberg Television.
This is a non sequitor. We had him on television
this week and I asked him, would you bet against Tesla?
It's gone down a ton You said a month ago
that you wouldn't And he said.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Is he doing irreparable damage to the Tesla brand? I
mean maybe, But again, this guy, for years and years
and years has done nothing but pull rabbits out of
the hat.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So we'll see how long this Tesla draw down continues.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
But so, how does.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
This end up? This Endeavor Silverlake deal? You wrote that
it closes in the next two weeks or so. Hasn't
appraisal case actually materialized yet?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
No, No, you have to wait until they closes. There's
a lot of technical requirements, one of which is that
in this case, you need to have held your shares
continuously from February fourth. So weird thing is that Endeavor
is not trading like more than a dollar above the
deal price, And if you're buying the stock now hoping
to get more money in appraisal, that won't work. You
(08:19):
have to have owned the stock.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Ago.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So I don't really know why the stock is trading
like that high. Like I think one answer is there
is some expectation that possibly silver Lake will raise the
deal price, but they've said they won't. And they've said
not only have they said they won't raise the deal price,
they've said, if you demand appraisal, and like I read
one estimate that like two thirds of shares are going
to demand appraisal, they say, if you demand appraisal, we
(08:46):
will not pay you anything at closing. We'll wait until
years later when the appraisal cases is finished. And that's
a little unusual. It used to be that that was
the norm. If you demanded appraisal, you didn't get any
money when the deal closed, waited until you went through
your appraisal case. But one thing that happened is that
when you brought an appraisal case years later, the judgment say, okay,
(09:07):
the deal price was actually fair. You only get the
deal price you get in this case twenty seven fifty,
but you also get interest, and the interest is at
a very high rate, like it' said five hundred basis
points over fed funds. And so people would do appraisal
cases thinking well, if I win, I get more money
than the deal price, and even if I lose, I
get the deal price plus like extremely high interest, so
it's great for me. That became annoying enough that it's
(09:30):
not become kind of the norm for buyers to just
give you the deal price day one and say don't
we won't pay you interest on that. If you later
win the case, we'll give you the extra money, but
like day one, you get the deal price and silver
like case said they won't do that in this case,
which I think people will perceive as like trying to
smoke out week hounds, because if you're like a arbor
treasurer and you have to finance the position for years,
(09:52):
you might be like, yeah, never mind. Yeah, But here
they're kind of insisting they're not going to raise the
deal price. They're going to fight the appraisal case. They
say that the price of TKO is artificial and like
it's you know, has to do with arbitrage activity and
it's not like a real price, which is not a
lot of evidence for and Endeavor has itself been buying
(10:12):
TKO shares, so there's some reason to think it's not
a completely artificial price, and it has to do more
with like tk's business.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Has been doing well fundamentals, perhaps fundamentals. I don't know,
I find myself sympathetic to this private equity company.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh yeah, me too. It's weird that it's weird that
you don't get the benefit of that, right and like
right and again, like in the context of like if
like Endeavor was trying to back out of the deal,
you'd be like, no, you like you signed a deal
like had like TKO gone down and Silver like couldn't
get out of the deal TKO went up. You can't
get out of the deal. It's totally like a reasonable
(10:46):
thing for cilvill like to be like, look, we won't.
We got the benefit of our bargain.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
But it's not how I feel like we're going to
be talking about this again.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, one possibility is they
will bump the deal price a little bit, but there's
kind of a big gap between what the arbitragures think
this company is worth and what so really I quanted
to pay, So you know, they may just.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Fight it for years years of content. Well, let's return
(11:28):
to something that we have already talked about, sure, and
that is private credit liquidity, specifically in ETFs.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I feel like I spent years writing people are worried
about bombacking liquidity and making a big joke of it,
and now I feel like I've spent one year of
this podcast talking every week about people being worried about
credit liquidity, and here we are talking about private credit liquidity.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
That's true. Well, the b Bank of International Settlements is
worried about social warriors. Yeah, they're coming out with a
lot of concerns basically about exactly that liquidity. You have
this rush for retail hash among just the asset management world,
and they're worried that that's going to create vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I feel we've talked about this on the podcast before,
but I wanted to ask you. Yeah, okay, retail private
credit vehicles have been a thing for years. Uncontroversially. There's
a thing that's called a business development company or BDC. Yeah,
it is a retail private credit vehicle. There are lots
of them. They trade on the Stock Exchange, they have tickers.
They're effectively closed down fund for like direct lending off
(12:28):
in middle market like direct lending. And so you can
buy a retail private credit fund in your brokerage account
and that's not a liquidity worry. I mean it is
a little bit like the BS A little bit worried
about BDCs because they're levered, But fundamentally a BDC is
a close doun fund, right Like you can put money in,
you can't take money out. You can trade shares on
the stock exchange, but you can't go to the BDC
(12:48):
and say I want my money back. And so the
liquidity where people have is like investors in liquid exchange
traded private credit funds will go to the private credit
fund and say I want my money back, and the
private credit fund will have we have all these liquid loans.
We can't give your money back. They're all tied up
and loans and then like the world will come crashing down.
But BDCs just don't have that problem.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, go on.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
The BIS is worried because like there's one ets, just
one et ETF. If you can go to the issuer
and say I want my back, my question is why
do we need the ETF. I understand that in your world,
the best of all things is the ETF. And I
understand obviously a marketing benefit, but like if you're a
(13:29):
private credits you're like, you're like, okay, the right funding
model is a permanent capital closed then fund funding model.
That technology exists. We have billions of dollars in it. Yeah,
why do we need to go to the ETF.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
You also have interval funds. You have had ways for
retail to access privately.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Like interval funds, like you might be a little worry
about liquidity, is like a fully closed un fund. But
like you're right, you have a lot of things that
are not ETFs.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, you do have ETFs. Does the world need private
credit ETFs? I don't know. I'm not qualified to answer
that question, but it just speaks to the desire among
a lot of these issuers and a lot of these
private market folks wanting to tap into this new source
of demand. I mean, I know, but like, why.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is that a new source? Like to me, it's weaks
to the desire of retail investors to have specifically an
ETF and not a right I guess I get the
ETF technology is a little nicer, but.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
It's like I think it's this is just one woman's suspicion.
I think that's the driving force, is that the muscle
memory is there people know how to get their hands
on ETFs, that muscle memory might not exist or be
developed when it comes to BDCs. This is the same thing,
I know, but it's just it's nice.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
There's a lot of stuff that's like more like there's
like publicly trader well.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I talk to a lot of asset managers and a
lot of asset C suites at asset management firms, and
they always tell me we're rapper agnostic. We will pick
the product that fits best with the asset class that
we're talking about. And I have the suspicion that for
a lot of retail investors or folks who started investing
in the last five years or so, basically the post
(15:06):
pandemic period, it's single stocks or it's ETFs. Like people
know how to do that. They know how to go
to Robinhood or Fidelity or whatever platform they use and
buy an ETF. It's simple.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's just as simple to buy a BDC.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I know, but I feel like the familiarity isn't there
if you have an ETF that says I am a
private credit ETF. Give me a name of a BDC.
It doesn't read as cleanly. There's so many examples.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's true that the words BDC make it sound like
something other than a close than private equity fund, private
credit fund, so right, you could be confused by that.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, there's so many examples of tickers that tend to outperform,
even though there's a fund that offers the same exposure
and it's priced lower. But it's just this fund has
a nicer name, and it has a more intuitive ticker,
and that's why it tends to get If you launch.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
A private credityf, then like people read articles about like yeah,
the first private credity.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And the SEC might write a letter basically saying how
upset it is that this private credit ETF that they
allowed to launch actually launched.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Or the BIS might read a report.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Something that I thought was interesting in the BIS report
is that it's talking about, basically, it's worried that you're
going if you introduce retail into this marketplace that you're
going to one day see this exodus and then you
see the illiquidity doom loop that people like to talk.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
About hotel redeemable retail, Right, Yeah, you have locked up retail.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, I think that maybe they're worrying about the wrong
cohort of investors because I don't know. I think about
products that are really popular with retail, and I think
about the average vanguard investor, for example, that sort of
self directed mom and pop sort of said, or people
who are working with financial advisors. There's a lot of
(16:54):
sticky retail cash out there. It's more these ETFs that
are used as like trading vehicles or liquids sleeves, what
have you. That's where you tend to see more panicky
outflows than you do with ETFs that are straight up
retail products.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah. I think, like in general, that people are worried
about whatever. Liquidity worries are always like a little bit overblown,
particularly it comes to retail. Now, ETFs are not a
purely retail product, right, And you can imagine if private
credit ETFs became a bigger thing, like some more institutional
people allocating money to them for whatever reason is like
you know, indexy private credit exposure and taking money out
(17:32):
in a downturn. You can also just imagine retail panicking. Like,
I agree with you that, like it's often stickier than
like the worries that people have, but yeah, it's still
a possibility to me. Like the solution to this worry
is like, like, the reason I was never that worried
about bomb market liquidity is because like, eh, that you
(17:53):
can't trade your bonds, like the press will go down.
It's not a deal. Yeah, that's not really true. In
private credit, it's like not as true, right, because you
kind of can't trade your private credit. But like one
thing we've talked about a lot on this podcast is
like that's gonna change. There's gonna be a private credit market.
You'll be able to trade your private credit, and so
there'll be some like outlet for it where if everyone
does take their money out of the ETF, there's some
way to you know, monetize the underlying hole things so
(18:16):
that like the system doesn't freeze.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Won't it be fun to find out though?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Oh yeah, it'll be very fun to watch the development
of private credit trading platforms.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I was speaking to Mark lib Schultz of Blue al
a couple of weeks ago at Bloomberg invest and I
kind of like his stance. I mean, you have the
Apollos of the world saying that the private markets are
going to become the new public markets, and that's the
theme you've written about a lot. His stance is more
private markets should be private markets. They're not trying to
build out a trading desk like Apollo. I believe that
(18:47):
they filed for an interval fund for private assets, but
they're not on board with this. You know, private should
be out in the public.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
It is true that, like one attraction of private credit
to a lot of borrowers is you will have a
relationship with a small defined group of lenders rather than
like who knows who owns your debt today? Right, Like
that's an appeal to borrow Then that's undermined if you
sort of a trading desk and want private credit to
be super liquid. So it sort of makes sense that
a lot of people would not want them. Yeah, but
(19:17):
I sort of bet on everything becoming traded over time.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, that does seem to be the future that we
were marching towards. Just a note on the State Street
Apollo ETF. There has been a ton of drama over it. Again.
The SEC sent a strongly worded letter which was fun
and unusual. It really hasn't attracted too many inflows just yet, which.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Waiting to see if it's illegal. Yeah, well not private credit.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Well that's true.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I think it was.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
CFR.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I did buy a BDC. It's all private.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Creditsjeez, Louise, I get it. You you run a BDC market,
who is paying you? CFRII did an analysis early in
so it wasn't quite fair because it hadn't been alive
for that long, but they found that like five percent
of its portfolio was private credit. But it says it
can go up to thirty five percent.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
We'll see.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
The American Dream is a mall in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
We barely have anything to talk about, but we both
love malls in New Jersey, and so.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
We simultaneously have not that much to say, but also.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
A lot to talk about. The American Dream lok.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
No, which is crazy. So I drive to New Jersey
all the time to go horseback riding. So I passed
the American Dream mall probably four to six times a week,
and I always just look at it and I can't
believe it exists. I can't believe it exists, and it
so many times it almost it doesn't exists.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
For test purposes to this American Dream is a mall.
It's so much more than a mall. We'll get to that,
but it's a mall in New Jersey, and it took
a very long time to develop. And that's development was
filled with trauma, some of which I was involved in
as a young lawyer.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, I want to get into that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
But so as part of the development, they like got
some land from the state and like they agreed to
make payments and the taxes just kind of like taxes
to the local government. And basically the way it where
is like you developed them all and you're not making
payments because it's like, you know, you're spending all your
money to developing them all, and then you're like you're
running the mall, you're making money, and you start making
the payments and the taxes. And that was the deal.
(21:42):
And the company has been running the mall for some
number of years now. It opened in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Which is an amazing time to open a mall, such.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
A good mall, and they have not been making the
payments of the taxes because they said, no, we're not
we're not like officially open to the public for business. Sure,
some stores are open, the ski slope, the water park,
some other things.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
There's a roller coaster, there's.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
A roller coast ferris wheel, but we're not at one
hundred percent occupancy, which like no malls e run one
hundred percent occupancy. We're not one hundred percent occupancy, so
we're not technically open to the general public, and so
we don't have to make the payments yet. And the
Lowy government sued and this past week the mall lost
and the judge just like, come on, you're open for business,
and so they have to make all the payments.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I want to believe that the judge specifically went to
the mall just to check it out.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
You know, if she went to this mall which you have,
which I have, you would think it's open for business.
It's like a little bit of a weird mall because
it's so big. Yeah, it's like you kind of feel
like there must be thousands of people elsewhere and not here.
But no, I've been to this mall a couple of
times and walked through it on the way to the
giant indoor water park that is at the mall.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Amazing, it's so good. You've shown me photos of this
water park and it looks like you're on a cruise ship,
like it is soize.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I've also recently saw an Instagram video from a friend
of mine who took her kids skiing at the American
Dream Hall.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
So did Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, big indoor ski slope being relative, sure, I don't
have a great sample, right, it's not like Aspen. Bigger
than slop at my house.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yes, probably bigger than the ski slope at most indoor malls.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yes, yeah, I don't know the world record for.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I feel like it's in Dubai or something.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Oh yeah, I think I think there is a big
indoor ski slop in Dubai. Anyway, it's a big one
for a mall. It's a big mall, and it's very
much in operation. You know, it's so in operation that
it's open on Sundays, which violates like the local blue laws,
and like there's a reporting that like the city of
paramis or somebody's going to sue to bake them clothes
(23:53):
on Sundays.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I love that the American Dream is not paying taxes,
and also it's open on Sundays. It just and it's
a new It just feels all of it it is
together so deliciously, and I'm I'm just so grateful that
it exists. I haven't been, so I drive past it
all the time, and usually I'm alone. I'm not going
(24:15):
to go by myself. I don't have my horse, I
don't have my husband. The mall probably, I mean it's
he probably has like a I mean hopefully someone that's
listening and getting ideas of how to build out them
all further. I can't believe it exists. I'm worried though
it'll be too crowded. Every time I drive past and
think about going in, I'm worried that, you know, it
(24:37):
just wouldn't even be fun because there's going to be
lines for the indoor ski slope.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I don't know. I've only been on weekdays during school breaks,
and it's not that crowd. The water break gets busy.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, I'm sure it's poppin'.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, but like the mall feels like, you know, it's
like a mall.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Why did they change the name from Xanda Do, though
Xana Do is such a cool name.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I don't know, actually, But like when I was a
young lawyer, I worked in the cell of the troubled
company that, among other things, owned meadowlands at Zanta dou
as it was then called This was like fifteen years
before them all actually opened. Them all opened in twenty nineteen.
This is like I was like doing like twenty two
thousand five or something, and it became if hecame so
famously troubled that it's like there's a picture of it
(25:17):
on the Wikipedia page for the word booondoggles incredible. So
I think maybe they were like, this is cursed. We
need to change the name.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
So like people will we need to make people for cat.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah. Yeah. If you like went to like a retailer
and we're like, hey, would you like to open our
store in our mall, They're like, what mall? And you're
like metalands Xanati the God No, right, So you have
to change the name. I think that might be it
also just like you know, it's like different companies took
it over and like you want to put your own
branding on it.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Dad is a pretty good name for them all?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, pretty good. I don't know. Maybe you'll name a
child Sandado. But also part of the reason I can't
believe it exists is because I've been traveling the well
worn path between Manhattan and New Jersey for my entire
life and for a lot of my life. This thing
was just on the side of the highway, not open.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Famous dog under construction. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, so I feel like in a way, like I'm
not sure it exists right.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Right, You short of get the benefit of that being
like our mall isn't open because it's like it wasn't
open for twenty years, Like, who would believe it open?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
It's only been open for five to six years. Twenty
five year history exactly. So I don't know. Maybe in
another couple of decades I'll believe it truly that it's open.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Just Endo Skiing Resort is in Shanghaier.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Tells us, Wow, I knew it wasn't here in New Jersey. Also,
thank you to everyone who's been emailing into the Money
Stuff mail bag. Next week we're going to be doing
a mail bag episode. So Katy off, yes skiing, Yeah
at an undisclosed location outdoors, Yeah, an indoor outdoor ski slope.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And that was the Money Stuff Podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I'm Matt Levi and I'm Katie Greifeld.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
You can find my work by subscribing to The moneystuffnewsletter
on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And you can find me on Bloomberg TV. Every day
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Speaker 1 (27:12):
We'd love to hear from you. You can send an
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You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening
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Speaker 1 (27:24):
The Money Stuff podcast is produced by Anna Maserakus and
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Speaker 2 (27:28):
Theme music was composed by Blake Maples.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Brandon Francis Nunim is our.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Executive producer, and Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Thanks for listening to The Money Stuff Podcasts. We'll be
back next week with more stuff
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
What if Matt and I talked super fast, but then
you slowed it down to make the podcast longer.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
You could pitch me down, so I sounded like this. God,
wouldn't that be good?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
You sound like a fancy man.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I am a fancy man.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hello, and welcome to The Money Stuff Podcast. You're a
weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money.
I'm Matt Levin and I write The Money Stuff colmed
for Blueberg Opinion.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and
an anchor for Bloomberg Television.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
What are we talking about today, Katie?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
We're going to talk about wrestling and fighting, and we're
going to talk about private credit ETF liquidity I frequently
visited topic on this podcast. And then we're going to
talk about the mirage of the American Dream. Yes, exactly,
So let's go right into it. This is complicated. We're
(01:02):
talking about Endeavor, we're talking about TKL, we're talking about
Silver Lake. Can you explain first all the ownership structure
of what we're talking about?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, So Endeavor is like a talent agency slash media behemoth.
It's like Ari Emmanuel's talent Agency that became a giant thing.
And one reason it's a giant thing is that it
owned WWE World Wrestling Entertainment, which then merged with UFC
the Ultimate Fighting Championship to form a giant fighting complex.
And that fighting complex is called TKO is the name
(01:31):
of the company, and it's now a public company, and
Davor owns a little more than half of it, And
so Endeavor is a company that owns a little bit
more than half of another company. They're both public. Endeavor's public.
TKO as public, Endeavor is like seventy percent owned by
silver Lake, the private equity firm. Right, silver Lake has
this ladder. It wants to take Endeavor private. Let's buy
the shares that it doesn't already own, and it negotiated
(01:53):
a merger with the board of directors and it agreed
to pay twenty seven to fifty per share for the
remainder of Endeavor. That happened like a year ago. It's
they're working to get closing. And what has happened in
the interim is that the stock price of TKO has
gone way out. So what that means is that in
Deeva runs more than half of TKO has become a
(02:15):
lot more valuable. That means that Endeavor has become a
lot more valuable, or you would think that would be
the case. And so all the shareholders of Endeavor who
are not silver Lake say, well, you agreed to pay
twenty seven to fifty a year ago. The company is
more valuable. Now we want more money. Silver Like I
said no, they agreed to the deal twenty seven to fifteen.
That's what we're doing. And the shareholders are revolting. They're
(02:37):
saying they're going to demand appraisal, which is like in Delaware,
if you don't like a merger price, you can go
to a judge and say this was an unfair, too
low price. I'd like more, and the judge can say yes,
here you go. In recent years, it has been tough
to win appraisal cases because usually the judges are like no,
for complicated reasons you can get into. But here it's
(02:57):
an unusually easy case because they're like, look, most of
this company's asked are this public company. The shares have
gone up, so we know it's worth more than the
great deal, so you should give us more money.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I have two questions here one is that I mean,
you write and you just said that it used to
be easier to win appraisal crisis. You wrote that it
changed in twenty seventeen, which seems I can't like, I
can't think of a catalyst, like why did it change
in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
There's kind of two points here. So one is like
Delaware judges or experts in corporate law and banking and
mergers and see themselves as being expert in like knowing
how companies work. And so it used to be you'd
go to a Dellary judge and say this company is
worth more than the acquirer paid for it, and you'd
present like your discattered cash flow model, and the acquirer
would present their model, and there'd be an argument, and
(03:44):
the judge would think about all of this and be like,
you're right, it's worth more. And people got kind of
annoyed with that and said, why should a judge get
to decide what the company is worth? And what happened
is that, like twenty seventeen is like the turning point
people point to you because it's a big case. The
dell by a like Michael Debob Dell a judge said no,
(04:06):
he underpaid for it, and he orded more money. And
then the Delaware Supreme Court reversed that on appeal and said, basically,
like you should give more weight to objective facts, like
the company ran a merger process and the highest bid
was what it got right, or the company's stock trades
in the market and you can sort of look at
the stock price and say that's a pretty good indicator
(04:28):
of what the company is worth. So basically since Dell,
there's been less of an emphasis on Delaware judges listening
to arguments about what a company is worth and like
making their own decision, and more of an emphasis on like,
what the market says the company is worth is like,
most of the time pretty good evidence. So it's not
like you can never have appraise anymore. It's like it's
(04:49):
just like a little bit like a higher bar to
prove that the company is worth something other than what
the market says it's worth or what the merger says
it's worth. And that's what makes this case unusual because
here the disgruntled shareholders aren't saying, oh, we want you
to take our evidence of value rather than the market's
evidence of value, saying no, no, like the market price says
(05:10):
this company is worth more than then silver Lake is
paying for it. Yeah, and silver Lake is the one saying, no,
the market price is fake.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well do you say that this is a pretty straightforward
case of appraisal. But couldn't you make the case that
silver Lake just made a good deal here that they
saw that this company is It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
That doesn't matter, Like, yes, absolutely in the ordinary course
of things, Like they agreed this deal. If you're like, Okay,
you agreed on a deal a year ago, and since
then the market has gone up, you should get the
benefit of yeah, and like, right, as a matter of
like merger practice, endeavor shouldn't be able to back out
of the deal now because the market went up, right, Yeah,
But that's not how appraisal works. Like appraisal is just
(05:47):
like a thing in the law, and the thing says,
you know, the shareholders are entitled to the fair value
of the company at the time of the closing of
the merger, so like technically they're entitled to this.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
It's just like this is like a weird element of
law that people like not to think that much about.
Like the difference between signing and closing but here the
company has gone up a lot between.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Signing, and actually it's gone up so much that I
did some reporting for this podcast. Usually I just show up,
but in this case, I asked KEITHA. Rong Goanathan of
Bloomberg Intelligence basically, why have TKA's shares gone up so
much since Endeavor agreed to that deal with silver Lake
It was in April twenty twenty four. Her answer was,
they have a big UFC media rights deal with Disney
(06:25):
that is expiring at the end of twenty twenty five.
There's reports that are suggesting that they're asking for a
doubling of yearly fees to a billion dollars, which would
be substantial. There's also a little bit of a Trump effect,
not to sure gaft.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
You know, it seems like the sort of thing that
would thrive.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, he's shown up at wrestling matches. I thought that
was a little bit interesting because there's no one closer
to Donald Trump right now than Elon Musk, and Elon
Musk obviously has had the opposite experience in the public markets,
at least with Tesla.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, right, it's interesting, Like you think about like the
stereotypical Tesla buyer from three years ago, and how they
would feel about it. I mus, then you think about
like the stereotypical wrestling thing. Yeah, that's a slightly different.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Demographic, that's true, it's totally different markets. I just think
about that too. We had Carson Block on Bloomberg Television.
This is a non sequitor. We had him on television
this week and I asked him, would you bet against Tesla?
It's gone down a ton You said a month ago
that you wouldn't And he said.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Is he doing irreparable damage to the Tesla brand? I
mean maybe, But again, this guy, for years and years
and years has done nothing but pull rabbits out of
the hat.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So we'll see how long this Tesla draw down continues.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
But so, how does.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
This end up? This Endeavor Silverlake deal? You wrote that
it closes in the next two weeks or so. Hasn't
appraisal case actually materialized yet?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
No, No, you have to wait until they closes. There's
a lot of technical requirements, one of which is that
in this case, you need to have held your shares
continuously from February fourth. So weird thing is that Endeavor
is not trading like more than a dollar above the
deal price, And if you're buying the stock now hoping
to get more money in appraisal, that won't work. You
(08:19):
have to have owned the stock.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Ago.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So I don't really know why the stock is trading
like that high. Like I think one answer is there
is some expectation that possibly silver Lake will raise the
deal price, but they've said they won't. And they've said
not only have they said they won't raise the deal price,
they've said, if you demand appraisal, and like I read
one estimate that like two thirds of shares are going
to demand appraisal, they say, if you demand appraisal, we
(08:46):
will not pay you anything at closing. We'll wait until
years later when the appraisal cases is finished. And that's
a little unusual. It used to be that that was
the norm. If you demanded appraisal, you didn't get any
money when the deal closed, waited until you went through
your appraisal case. But one thing that happened is that
when you brought an appraisal case years later, the judgment say, okay,
(09:07):
the deal price was actually fair. You only get the
deal price you get in this case twenty seven fifty,
but you also get interest, and the interest is at
a very high rate, like it' said five hundred basis
points over fed funds. And so people would do appraisal
cases thinking well, if I win, I get more money
than the deal price, and even if I lose, I
get the deal price plus like extremely high interest, so
it's great for me. That became annoying enough that it's
(09:30):
not become kind of the norm for buyers to just
give you the deal price day one and say don't
we won't pay you interest on that. If you later
win the case, we'll give you the extra money, but
like day one, you get the deal price and silver
like case said they won't do that in this case,
which I think people will perceive as like trying to
smoke out week hounds, because if you're like a arbor
treasurer and you have to finance the position for years,
(09:52):
you might be like, yeah, never mind. Yeah, But here
they're kind of insisting they're not going to raise the
deal price. They're going to fight the appraisal case. They
say that the price of TKO is artificial and like
it's you know, has to do with arbitrage activity and
it's not like a real price, which is not a
lot of evidence for and Endeavor has itself been buying
(10:12):
TKO shares, so there's some reason to think it's not
a completely artificial price, and it has to do more
with like tk's business.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Has been doing well fundamentals, perhaps fundamentals. I don't know,
I find myself sympathetic to this private equity company.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Oh yeah, me too. It's weird that it's weird that
you don't get the benefit of that, right and like
right and again, like in the context of like if
like Endeavor was trying to back out of the deal,
you'd be like, no, you like you signed a deal
like had like TKO gone down and Silver like couldn't
get out of the deal TKO went up. You can't
get out of the deal. It's totally like a reasonable
(10:46):
thing for cilvill like to be like, look, we won't.
We got the benefit of our bargain.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
But it's not how I feel like we're going to
be talking about this again.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, one possibility is they
will bump the deal price a little bit, but there's
kind of a big gap between what the arbitragures think
this company is worth and what so really I quanted
to pay, So you know, they may just.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Fight it for years years of content. Well, let's return
(11:28):
to something that we have already talked about, sure, and
that is private credit liquidity, specifically in ETFs.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I feel like I spent years writing people are worried
about bombacking liquidity and making a big joke of it,
and now I feel like I've spent one year of
this podcast talking every week about people being worried about
credit liquidity, and here we are talking about private credit liquidity.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
That's true. Well, the b Bank of International Settlements is
worried about social warriors. Yeah, they're coming out with a
lot of concerns basically about exactly that liquidity. You have
this rush for retail hash among just the asset management world,
and they're worried that that's going to create vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I feel we've talked about this on the podcast before,
but I wanted to ask you. Yeah, okay, retail private
credit vehicles have been a thing for years. Uncontroversially. There's
a thing that's called a business development company or BDC. Yeah,
it is a retail private credit vehicle. There are lots
of them. They trade on the Stock Exchange, they have tickers.
They're effectively closed down fund for like direct lending off
(12:28):
in middle market like direct lending. And so you can
buy a retail private credit fund in your brokerage account
and that's not a liquidity worry. I mean it is
a little bit like the BS A little bit worried
about BDCs because they're levered, But fundamentally a BDC is
a close doun fund, right Like you can put money in,
you can't take money out. You can trade shares on
the stock exchange, but you can't go to the BDC
(12:48):
and say I want my money back. And so the
liquidity where people have is like investors in liquid exchange
traded private credit funds will go to the private credit
fund and say I want my money back, and the
private credit fund will have we have all these liquid loans.
We can't give your money back. They're all tied up
and loans and then like the world will come crashing down.
But BDCs just don't have that problem.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, go on.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
The BIS is worried because like there's one ets, just
one et ETF. If you can go to the issuer
and say I want my back, my question is why
do we need the ETF. I understand that in your world,
the best of all things is the ETF. And I
understand obviously a marketing benefit, but like if you're a
(13:29):
private credits you're like, you're like, okay, the right funding
model is a permanent capital closed then fund funding model.
That technology exists. We have billions of dollars in it. Yeah,
why do we need to go to the ETF.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
You also have interval funds. You have had ways for
retail to access privately.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Like interval funds, like you might be a little worry
about liquidity, is like a fully closed un fund. But
like you're right, you have a lot of things that
are not ETFs.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, you do have ETFs. Does the world need private
credit ETFs? I don't know. I'm not qualified to answer
that question, but it just speaks to the desire among
a lot of these issuers and a lot of these
private market folks wanting to tap into this new source
of demand. I mean, I know, but like, why.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Is that a new source? Like to me, it's weaks
to the desire of retail investors to have specifically an
ETF and not a right I guess I get the
ETF technology is a little nicer, but.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
It's like I think it's this is just one woman's suspicion.
I think that's the driving force, is that the muscle
memory is there people know how to get their hands
on ETFs, that muscle memory might not exist or be
developed when it comes to BDCs. This is the same thing,
I know, but it's just it's nice.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
There's a lot of stuff that's like more like there's
like publicly trader well.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
I talk to a lot of asset managers and a
lot of asset C suites at asset management firms, and
they always tell me we're rapper agnostic. We will pick
the product that fits best with the asset class that
we're talking about. And I have the suspicion that for
a lot of retail investors or folks who started investing
in the last five years or so, basically the post
(15:06):
pandemic period, it's single stocks or it's ETFs. Like people
know how to do that. They know how to go
to Robinhood or Fidelity or whatever platform they use and
buy an ETF. It's simple.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's just as simple to buy a BDC.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I know, but I feel like the familiarity isn't there
if you have an ETF that says I am a
private credit ETF. Give me a name of a BDC.
It doesn't read as cleanly. There's so many examples.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
It's true that the words BDC make it sound like
something other than a close than private equity fund, private
credit fund, so right, you could be confused by that.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, there's so many examples of tickers that tend to outperform,
even though there's a fund that offers the same exposure
and it's priced lower. But it's just this fund has
a nicer name, and it has a more intuitive ticker,
and that's why it tends to get If you launch.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
A private credityf, then like people read articles about like yeah,
the first private credity.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And the SEC might write a letter basically saying how
upset it is that this private credit ETF that they
allowed to launch actually launched.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Or the BIS might read a report.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Something that I thought was interesting in the BIS report
is that it's talking about, basically, it's worried that you're
going if you introduce retail into this marketplace that you're
going to one day see this exodus and then you
see the illiquidity doom loop that people like to talk.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
About hotel redeemable retail, Right, Yeah, you have locked up retail.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, I think that maybe they're worrying about the wrong
cohort of investors because I don't know. I think about
products that are really popular with retail, and I think
about the average vanguard investor, for example, that sort of
self directed mom and pop sort of said, or people
who are working with financial advisors. There's a lot of
(16:54):
sticky retail cash out there. It's more these ETFs that
are used as like trading vehicles or liquids sleeves, what
have you. That's where you tend to see more panicky
outflows than you do with ETFs that are straight up
retail products.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah. I think, like in general, that people are worried
about whatever. Liquidity worries are always like a little bit overblown,
particularly it comes to retail. Now, ETFs are not a
purely retail product, right, And you can imagine if private
credit ETFs became a bigger thing, like some more institutional
people allocating money to them for whatever reason is like
you know, indexy private credit exposure and taking money out
(17:32):
in a downturn. You can also just imagine retail panicking. Like,
I agree with you that, like it's often stickier than
like the worries that people have, but yeah, it's still
a possibility to me. Like the solution to this worry
is like, like, the reason I was never that worried
about bomb market liquidity is because like, eh, that you
(17:53):
can't trade your bonds, like the press will go down.
It's not a deal. Yeah, that's not really true. In
private credit, it's like not as true, right, because you
kind of can't trade your private credit. But like one
thing we've talked about a lot on this podcast is
like that's gonna change. There's gonna be a private credit market.
You'll be able to trade your private credit, and so
there'll be some like outlet for it where if everyone
does take their money out of the ETF, there's some
way to you know, monetize the underlying hole things so
(18:16):
that like the system doesn't freeze.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Won't it be fun to find out though?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Oh yeah, it'll be very fun to watch the development
of private credit trading platforms.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I was speaking to Mark lib Schultz of Blue al
a couple of weeks ago at Bloomberg invest and I
kind of like his stance. I mean, you have the
Apollos of the world saying that the private markets are
going to become the new public markets, and that's the
theme you've written about a lot. His stance is more
private markets should be private markets. They're not trying to
build out a trading desk like Apollo. I believe that
(18:47):
they filed for an interval fund for private assets, but
they're not on board with this. You know, private should
be out in the public.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
It is true that, like one attraction of private credit
to a lot of borrowers is you will have a
relationship with a small defined group of lenders rather than
like who knows who owns your debt today? Right, Like
that's an appeal to borrow Then that's undermined if you
sort of a trading desk and want private credit to
be super liquid. So it sort of makes sense that
a lot of people would not want them. Yeah, but
(19:17):
I sort of bet on everything becoming traded over time.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, that does seem to be the future that we
were marching towards. Just a note on the State Street
Apollo ETF. There has been a ton of drama over it. Again.
The SEC sent a strongly worded letter which was fun
and unusual. It really hasn't attracted too many inflows just yet, which.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Waiting to see if it's illegal. Yeah, well not private credit.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Well that's true.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I think it was.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
CFR.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I did buy a BDC. It's all private.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Creditsjeez, Louise, I get it. You you run a BDC market,
who is paying you? CFRII did an analysis early in
so it wasn't quite fair because it hadn't been alive
for that long, but they found that like five percent
of its portfolio was private credit. But it says it
can go up to thirty five percent.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
We'll see.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
The American Dream is a mall in New Jersey.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
We barely have anything to talk about, but we both
love malls in New Jersey, and so.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
We simultaneously have not that much to say, but also.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
A lot to talk about. The American Dream lok.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
No, which is crazy. So I drive to New Jersey
all the time to go horseback riding. So I passed
the American Dream mall probably four to six times a week,
and I always just look at it and I can't
believe it exists. I can't believe it exists, and it
so many times it almost it doesn't exists.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
For test purposes to this American Dream is a mall.
It's so much more than a mall. We'll get to that,
but it's a mall in New Jersey, and it took
a very long time to develop. And that's development was
filled with trauma, some of which I was involved in
as a young lawyer.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, I want to get into that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
But so as part of the development, they like got
some land from the state and like they agreed to
make payments and the taxes just kind of like taxes
to the local government. And basically the way it where
is like you developed them all and you're not making
payments because it's like, you know, you're spending all your
money to developing them all, and then you're like you're
running the mall, you're making money, and you start making
the payments and the taxes. And that was the deal.
(21:42):
And the company has been running the mall for some
number of years now. It opened in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Which is an amazing time to open a mall, such.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
A good mall, and they have not been making the
payments of the taxes because they said, no, we're not
we're not like officially open to the public for business. Sure,
some stores are open, the ski slope, the water park,
some other things.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
There's a roller coaster, there's.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
A roller coast ferris wheel, but we're not at one
hundred percent occupancy, which like no malls e run one
hundred percent occupancy. We're not one hundred percent occupancy, so
we're not technically open to the general public, and so
we don't have to make the payments yet. And the
Lowy government sued and this past week the mall lost
and the judge just like, come on, you're open for business,
and so they have to make all the payments.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I want to believe that the judge specifically went to
the mall just to check it out.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
You know, if she went to this mall which you have,
which I have, you would think it's open for business.
It's like a little bit of a weird mall because
it's so big. Yeah, it's like you kind of feel
like there must be thousands of people elsewhere and not here.
But no, I've been to this mall a couple of
times and walked through it on the way to the
giant indoor water park that is at the mall.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Amazing, it's so good. You've shown me photos of this
water park and it looks like you're on a cruise ship,
like it is soize.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I've also recently saw an Instagram video from a friend
of mine who took her kids skiing at the American
Dream Hall.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
So did Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah, big indoor ski slope being relative, sure, I don't
have a great sample, right, it's not like Aspen. Bigger
than slop at my house.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yes, probably bigger than the ski slope at most indoor malls.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yes, yeah, I don't know the world record for.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
I feel like it's in Dubai or something.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Oh yeah, I think I think there is a big
indoor ski slop in Dubai. Anyway, it's a big one
for a mall. It's a big mall, and it's very
much in operation. You know, it's so in operation that
it's open on Sundays, which violates like the local blue laws,
and like there's a reporting that like the city of
paramis or somebody's going to sue to bake them clothes
(23:53):
on Sundays.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I love that the American Dream is not paying taxes,
and also it's open on Sundays. It just and it's
a new It just feels all of it it is
together so deliciously, and I'm I'm just so grateful that
it exists. I haven't been, so I drive past it
all the time, and usually I'm alone. I'm not going
(24:15):
to go by myself. I don't have my horse, I
don't have my husband. The mall probably, I mean it's
he probably has like a I mean hopefully someone that's
listening and getting ideas of how to build out them
all further. I can't believe it exists. I'm worried though
it'll be too crowded. Every time I drive past and
think about going in, I'm worried that, you know, it
(24:37):
just wouldn't even be fun because there's going to be
lines for the indoor ski slope.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I don't know. I've only been on weekdays during school breaks,
and it's not that crowd. The water break gets busy.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, I'm sure it's poppin'.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, but like the mall feels like, you know, it's
like a mall.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Why did they change the name from Xanda Do, though
Xana Do is such a cool name.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I don't know, actually, But like when I was a
young lawyer, I worked in the cell of the troubled
company that, among other things, owned meadowlands at Zanta dou
as it was then called This was like fifteen years
before them all actually opened. Them all opened in twenty nineteen.
This is like I was like doing like twenty two
thousand five or something, and it became if hecame so
famously troubled that it's like there's a picture of it
(25:17):
on the Wikipedia page for the word booondoggles incredible. So
I think maybe they were like, this is cursed. We
need to change the name.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
So like people will we need to make people for cat.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah. Yeah. If you like went to like a retailer
and we're like, hey, would you like to open our
store in our mall, They're like, what mall? And you're
like metalands Xanati the God No, right, So you have
to change the name. I think that might be it
also just like you know, it's like different companies took
it over and like you want to put your own
branding on it.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Dad is a pretty good name for them all?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, pretty good. I don't know. Maybe you'll name a
child Sandado. But also part of the reason I can't
believe it exists is because I've been traveling the well
worn path between Manhattan and New Jersey for my entire
life and for a lot of my life. This thing
was just on the side of the highway, not open.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Famous dog under construction. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, so I feel like in a way, like I'm
not sure it exists right.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Right, You short of get the benefit of that being
like our mall isn't open because it's like it wasn't
open for twenty years, Like, who would believe it open?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
It's only been open for five to six years. Twenty
five year history exactly. So I don't know. Maybe in
another couple of decades I'll believe it truly that it's open.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Just Endo Skiing Resort is in Shanghaier.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Tells us, Wow, I knew it wasn't here in New Jersey. Also,
thank you to everyone who's been emailing into the Money
Stuff mail bag. Next week we're going to be doing
a mail bag episode. So Katy off, yes skiing, Yeah
at an undisclosed location outdoors, Yeah, an indoor outdoor ski slope.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
And that was the Money Stuff Podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I'm Matt Levi and I'm Katie Greifeld.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
You can find my work by subscribing to The moneystuffnewsletter
on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And you can find me on Bloomberg TV. Every day
on Open Interest between nine to eleven am Eastern.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
We'd love to hear from you. You can send an
email to Moneypod at Bloomberg dot net, ask us a
question and we might answer it on air.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening
right now and leave us a review. It helps more
people find the show.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
The Money Stuff podcast is produced by Anna Maserakus and
Moses onam Our.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Theme music was composed by Blake Maples.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Brandon Francis Nunim is our.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Executive producer, and Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Thanks for listening to The Money Stuff Podcasts. We'll be
back next week with more stuff
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