Brookfield Property Partners LP’s $14.8 billion offer for the portion of mall giant GGP Inc. it doesn’t already own is a low-ball bid that threatens property values across an industry that’s struggling in the age of e-commerce.
Brookfield -- which already owns 34 percent of GGP -- offered $23 a share, a transaction that values the landlord at $21.8 billion. That’s a large discount to what GGP’s portfolio of high-end malls is worth, Wall Street analysts said. Even Brookfield, as of Sept. 30, maintained that its stake in Chicago-based GGP implied a valuation of $26.5 billion. And on a conference call last month, Brookfield’s chief financial officer, Bryan Davis, said the shares were worth about $30.
