Headquartered in Great Neck, NY, BRT, a real estate investment trust, invests in real estate loans in income-producing and undeveloped properties, EPT, also a REIT, owns approximately 25 movie megaplexes in a dozen states and has an interest in a strip mall. It is headquartered in Kansas City, MO.BRT's tender required that its chairman and CEO, Frederic H. Gould, be elected to EPT's board, that BRT be allowed to purchase more than 9.8% of the company and be relieved of certain voting restrictions imposed by Maryland law.

In a letter to its shareholders, EPT stated that it opposed the tender offer because, if successful, both BRT and EPT might be considered an investment company that needed to be registered; and that federal law prohibits a person from serving as a director of a competing company. The letter also states that Gould headed a group of investors in 1989 that made a successful hostile bid of $16 per share for part of a public REIT that now trades at about $12.25 per share.