Great Lakes CFO James Hicks would not comment on the speculation surrounding Great Lakes, but he did say that the trust is in the midst of a "capital recycling" process. "We are realizing profits on deals that we did three or four years ago and reinvesting the proceeds," said Hicks. Great Lakes' latest purchase is the Woodfield Green office complex in booming Schaumburg, IL, for which Hicks said Great Lakes paid $10 million.

If the Great Lakes Board is looking for ways to maximize shareholder value, it isn't because management isn't doing a good job running the trust's assets. "Great Lakes is in the top half of all REITs in terms of performance over the last one year, three year and five year periods," says Haley. Indeed, the trust just reported its ninth straight double-digit quarterly increase in funds from operations. Great Lakes is the top performing REIT in the nation in terms of increasing its same-property cash flows, according to Haley. Reflecting this, Great Lakes shares have outperformed office REIT indexes by 10 percentage points so far this year.

What may be driving the Great Lakes board to examine its options is that, despite the recent strong showing in its share price, the trust may still be undervalued. Based on an approximate 10% jump in Great Lakes' share price since June 30th, the trust's equity market capitalization is currently in the $350 million range. That is considerably lower than the trust's $466 million gross book value, a figure that itself is usually considerably less than the portfolio's market value.