Regrouping after the Loss

This chapter begins with Charles Bagli, a real-estate reporter for the New York Times who wrote the piece announcing the MetLife auction. It mentions the Lehman Brothers, Ramus Capital with Apollo Real Estate, Tishman Speyer, and, to everyone's surprise, the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association as the top bidders for the two complexes. It also talks about how MetLife brushed aside arguments about equity, made no mention of history, and rejected any suggestion that it had on any continuing obligations to provide below-market housing in Stuy Town. The chapter discusses MetLife's CEO C. Robert Henrikson, who challenged the notion that Stuy Town could even be considered affordable housing. It highlights MetLife's sudden request to the remaining group of bidders to submit a plan for protecting the residents of the 11,000-apartment housing complex.