New Gramercy CEO Sees Challenges Ahead

NEW YORK CITY-Locally based Gramercy Capital Corp., which recently named Roger Cozzi as its new CEO , as GlobeSt.com previously reported, revealed in a Q3 conference call on Thursday that the company generated total revenues of $180 million during the Q3 2008. That number shows an increase of $89.8 million from $90.2 million during the same quarter of the prior year.

Nonetheless, Cozzi said during the call that there will be challenges ahead in weathering the current market turbulence until the company is once again in a position to grow. To that end, Gramercy revealed several modifications in the agreements it has with SL Green Realty, Gramercy’s largest shareholder and its manager through SL Green’s wholly owned subsidiary, GKK Manager LLC. The modifications are designed to increase liquidity, a goal Cozzi also emphasized during Thursday’s conference call. He outlined four immediate goals, to be pursued simultaneously over the next several months.

First of these goals will be “finding and hiring the best people” to fill the key positions that have been left vacant by the reorganization of the management team. There will be “a bottom-up review of the business plan for every individual asset in both Gramercy Finance and Gramercy Realty,” to be followed by “incorporating these plans into a three-year company business plan,” said Cozzi. The third of the measures will consist of “being proactive” about making sure that Gramercy is in a position “to pursue any and all liquidity creation strategies.” Finally, he said, Gramercy will “aggressively manage our loan portfolio and pursue asset dispositions” where appropriate.