Legal
JPMorgan Dragged Into Fight Over One of Chicago’s Oldest Hotels
- Wells Fargo filed lawsuit on behalf of bondholders in SDNY
- Case shows investors can’t always repossess property easily
The new legal actions put a focus on the details that govern how large buildings are operated on a daily basis.
Photographer: Christopher Dilts/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A JPMorgan Chase & Co. unit is being dragged into a legal fight over an unpaid $333 million loan backed by the Hilton Palmer House, one of downtown Chicago’s largest and oldest hotels.
Bondholders sued JPMorgan in federal court in New York last week, arguing the bank failed to tell investors key information about how the historic hotel is owned and operated. As bondholders would later learn, the hotel’s owner, New York-based Thor Equities, had split the rights to different parts of the hotel into separate parcels in the 2000s, complicating eventual efforts to take it over after it defaulted in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.