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Rich Rollo
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Joseph F. Dumond
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Hermann A. Peine
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BUSINESS & ECONOMICS - Corporate & Business History
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By Patricia Beard
No Description Available.
FORMAT: Softcover
By Patricia Beard
No Description Available.
FORMAT: Hardcover
By Gene Brown- don't email gbrown please!
The following excerpt comes directly in the book after a dramatic account of the attempted hostile takeover of Urstadt Biddle’s predecessor, HRE Properties, by a large real estate organization (latter a REIT) called Kimco. The fending off of that attempt and the elevation of Charles J. Urstadt to CEO marked the beginning of Urstadt Biddle Properties’ modern history and set the tone and general direction for the business that remains in effect today: Chapter Four: A New Business Plan The elevation of Charles J. Urstadt to CEO of HRE Properties in 1989 was occasioned by the fight to keep the company from being swallowed up by Kimco. But the ultimate significance of the move went far beyond HRE’s prolonged struggle to remain independent. In fact, the consequences of Urstadt’s new position for HRE’s ongoing operations would completely overshadow Kimco’s attempt at a hostile takeover. Urstadt did not just represent a new face at the top of HRE. He was not at the helm just to guide it through the current storm. He was a man with a plan, and stood for an entirely new direction in the company’s business. Indeed, at their meeting of September 19, 1989, the Trustees not only voted to make Urstadt HRE’s CEO, they also voted acceptance of his business plan to redirect the Trust, geographically consolidating its holdings in the Northeast while focusing on the acquisition and management of neighborhood shopping centers. Urstadt dedicated himself to fending off Kimco because, first of all, he firmly believed that HRE could maximize its profits by staying small. For Urstadt, it was a matter of basic business philosophy. “In large companies, entrepreneurial decisions do not exist,” Urstadt, who had learned from experience, said. “Only the political perspective does. People try to impress the boss as they seek various perks.” Having served at or near the top in several major real estate firms, as the head of New York State’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and as the first Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Battery Park City Authority, where he had to deal with government bureaucracy at the city, state and federal levels, Urstadt knew what large organizations entailed. Size mattered, and he wanted to keep HRE small, flexible and responsive. Related to size was distance – the geographical distance from a real estate company to the properties it owned and managed. Shrink the distance and you achieve greater efficiency and with it, lower operating and managerial costs. Urstadt couldn’t abide the Trust’s scattershot approach to property location and the lack of real estate business savvy that attitude reflected. Years later he would criticize the Boards’ simplistic concept that had them putting “two charts in each report: one was a chart of the United States and the other was a chart of the diversity of its property types. It seemed like the board was trying to color in all the states.” Urstadt’s grandfather, who had influenced him to go into real estate, had told him you ought to be able to walk to what you owned. In this day and age that was no longer always practical. But management should still be able to reach their company’s properties with no more than an hour or two behind the wheel, Urstadt believed. Ultimately that would be refined to a geographical criterion for HRE acquisitions that confined most of the Trust’s new investment possibilities to within about a 50-75 mile radius of corporate headquarters, a standard for acquisitions that remains in effect today at Urstadt Biddle Properties. As with geography, so with diversity. Scattering HRE’s property over multiple types of real estate investment was not likely to produce the best result. Concentrating on one sector in the business, ideally one more insulated from the inevitable boom and bust cycles that affected office buildings, was a better bet. The investment also ought to be in something that best matched the experience and skills of HRE’s personnel. Retail properties had good long-term prospects in the late 1980s and there were already people on board at the Trust who had experience in that area. Concentrating on the ownership of such properties would further hone the skills of HRE personnel, paying handsome dividends in lower management and operational costs. Furthermore, the market recently seemed to be saying that HRE, and HREI before it, had gone too far along the road to diversity. All the signs pointed in one direction. As Trustee Jim York later recalled of that turning point in the company’s history, CEO Urstadt was determined to “undiversify.” His approach was to put most of the company’s eggs in one basket and then watch the basket. What should go into that basket? Neighborhood shopping centers, especially ones anchored by supermarkets and featuring such basics as drug stores and personal service businesses such as barbershops, were more likely to negotiate the ups and downs of the economy and still remain upright. Even in hard times, people had to eat and get their hair cut. So it would be back to meat and potatoes basics in its most literal sense. If the Trust chose well among potential shopping center acquisitions and effectively managed what it chose, adding value by making attractive and practical renovations, securing the right mix of tenants, and negotiating the best possible leases with them, HRE could go on paying steady dividends while generating capital appreciation. Ultimately that’s what it was all about. The Trust hadn’t missed a dividend yet since its formation in 1969, and there wasn’t going to be a first time on Charles J. Urstadt’s watch. Urstadt was clearly going to put his imprint on HRE Properties, but it wasn’t going to be a one-man show. Far from it. Urstadt was of the old school that said you bring in the best people and then let them do what you hired them to do. Early on he set out the criteria for choosing Trust personnel, and they remain the same today: 1. You have to be grounded with an education in business and law and economics. 2. You have to be raised in a real estate atmosphere. 3. You have to stay in the business and follow it as a career. 4. You have to know more than anyone else. “We seek intelligence among our workers,” Urstadt said. “With ambition comes competitiveness. You move from one goal to another. You set a goal and you achieve it and then you set another goal. Some people if they lose they give up. What we teach is that success has many fathers.” When asked about his operational philosophy, Urstadt was even more succinct, condensing it into the four “go-gets”: “Go get the money. Go get the property. Go get the tenants. Go get the rent.” There was one other characteristic of potential Trust personnel that was vitally important to Charles J. Urstadt: he wanted them to want to “own” their work in more than just a metaphorical sense. Urstadt wanted everyone connected to the Trust to act as if he or she had a personal stake in its success because, in fact, they actually did. His main complaint about the old guard among the Trustees and management was that they “did not have their own skin in the game.” They didn’t “have their own savings and their own equity” tied to a healthy bottom line. “It’s the difference between owning your own car and renting a car.” Self-interest was always the best motivator. The best way to get Trust personnel to care just as much about HRE’s financial success as did its shareholders was for them to be shareholders, with holdings as large as possible. Consequently, employee and Trustee stock ownership plans would always be a significant part of this REIT under Urstadt’s management. In January 1991, HRE began to implement this policy, increasing the potential shares in its stock option plan from 300,000 to 450,000, and adding an annual grant of 1,000 shares to non-employee Trustees. Urstadt also anticipated by many years the more recent criticisms in the financial press about possible conflicts of interest between the exercising of managerial stock options and the conduct of a company’s business. He took pains to see to it that the Trust was always managed so as to increase shareholder value and genuine company profitability, not just to produce gaudy numbers from quarter to quarter that temporarily inflated the price of shares, provoking stock analysts to run to their crystal balls and ultimately benefiting mostly insiders holding stock options. Then there was the matter of the Trust’s dividend policy. Setting it higher than was reasonable might temporarily increase the value of the stock, making shareholders happy, at least for a while. But was that a good business decision? The real estate business is an ongoing enterprise, not a short-run contest to see how good one can look from quarter to quarter. Urstadt’s idea was to build the business along sound lines, not to drain it of needed resources for short-term payouts when those resources were needed to invest in new properties and upgrade old ones to spur their future growth. At the Trustees meeting on September 19, 1990, Urstadt created the guidelines that HRE would henceforth use to set the quarterly dividend. He told the Board that for the first three quarters of that fiscal year the $1.15 in dividends that had been paid out had “exceeded funds from operations by about $.10 a share.” HRE’s CEO felt that the issue was important enough to the shareholders to spell out in a press release: “Today’s difficult real estate market and uncertain outlook for the economy make it prudent that we provide for contingencies and for future growth. Beginning in fiscal 1991, the Trustees expect to declare dividends at levels not exceeding the Trust’s funds from operations taking into account historic and expected fiscal results. HRE believes funds from operations to be the most significant indicator of the trust’s performance.” The new HRE was anxious to communicate to its shareholders that this was no longer the staid and static real estate investment trust that Merrill Lynch had created in 1969. What better way to do that than through the pages of its annual report? Any company’s annual report is a statement, often made with powerful, persuasive images, about what it is, how it sees itself and where it aims to go. In several of the HREI reports, the only photographs were of the Trustees, a group of well dressed, predominantly late middle aged, prosperous looking gentlemen who could easily have been Wall Street bond traders. The message conveyed through these images was: “We know what we’re doing and your money is in good hands. We’re going to do this year just what we did last year. Don’t worry, there’s nothing new under the sun” And the text and financial data presented enhanced that picture. The 1989 Annual Report was the first under HRE’s new management. In every way it announced a new period in the Trust’s history. ......................................................... Urstadt concluded his message to shareholders in a direct and personal way that embodied the new attitude to be found at HRE Properties: “My personal commitment to the Trust as the owner of 13% of the outstanding shares indicates my confidence that its values are sound and that I am committed to creating the highest possible future values for all shareholders.” And in the 1991 Annual Report, Urstadt’s message to shareholders began not with “To Our Shareholders” but with “Dear Fellow Shareholders . . .” It concluded: “My personal commitment to HRE is unwavering. I own 855,800 shares, or more than 16% of the total, and this includes 25,000 shares I purchased this month.”
FORMAT: E-Book
By Gene Brown- don't email gbrown please!
The following excerpt comes directly in the book after a dramatic account of the attempted hostile takeover of Urstadt Biddle’s predecessor, HRE Properties, by a large real estate organization (latter a REIT) called Kimco. The fending off of that attempt and the elevation of Charles J. Urstadt to CEO marked the beginning of Urstadt Biddle Properties’ modern history and set the tone and general direction for the business that remains in effect today: Chapter Four: A New Business Plan The elevation of Charles J. Urstadt to CEO of HRE Properties in 1989 was occasioned by the fight to keep the company from being swallowed up by Kimco. But the ultimate significance of the move went far beyond HRE’s prolonged struggle to remain independent. In fact, the consequences of Urstadt’s new position for HRE’s ongoing operations would completely overshadow Kimco’s attempt at a hostile takeover. Urstadt did not just represent a new face at the top of HRE. He was not at the helm just to guide it through the current storm. He was a man with a plan, and stood for an entirely new direction in the company’s business. Indeed, at their meeting of September 19, 1989, the Trustees not only voted to make Urstadt HRE’s CEO, they also voted acceptance of his business plan to redirect the Trust, geographically consolidating its holdings in the Northeast while focusing on the acquisition and management of neighborhood shopping centers. Urstadt dedicated himself to fending off Kimco because, first of all, he firmly believed that HRE could maximize its profits by staying small. For Urstadt, it was a matter of basic business philosophy. “In large companies, entrepreneurial decisions do not exist,” Urstadt, who had learned from experience, said. “Only the political perspective does. People try to impress the boss as they seek various perks.” Having served at or near the top in several major real estate firms, as the head of New York State’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and as the first Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Battery Park City Authority, where he had to deal with government bureaucracy at the city, state and federal levels, Urstadt knew what large organizations entailed. Size mattered, and he wanted to keep HRE small, flexible and responsive. Related to size was distance – the geographical distance from a real estate company to the properties it owned and managed. Shrink the distance and you achieve greater efficiency and with it, lower operating and managerial costs. Urstadt couldn’t abide the Trust’s scattershot approach to property location and the lack of real estate business savvy that attitude reflected. Years later he would criticize the Boards’ simplistic concept that had them putting “two charts in each report: one was a chart of the United States and the other was a chart of the diversity of its property types. It seemed like the board was trying to color in all the states.” Urstadt’s grandfather, who had influenced him to go into real estate, had told him you ought to be able to walk to what you owned. In this day and age that was no longer always practical. But management should still be able to reach their company’s properties with no more than an hour or two behind the wheel, Urstadt believed. Ultimately that would be refined to a geographical criterion for HRE acquisitions that confined most of the Trust’s new investment possibilities to within about a 50-75 mile radius of corporate headquarters, a standard for acquisitions that remains in effect today at Urstadt Biddle Properties. As with geography, so with diversity. Scattering HRE’s property over multiple types of real estate investment was not likely to produce the best result. Concentrating on one sector in the business, ideally one more insulated from the inevitable boom and bust cycles that affected office buildings, was a better bet. The investment also ought to be in something that best matched the experience and skills of HRE’s personnel. Retail properties had good long-term prospects in the late 1980s and there were already people on board at the Trust who had experience in that area. Concentrating on the ownership of such properties would further hone the skills of HRE personnel, paying handsome dividends in lower management and operational costs. Furthermore, the market recently seemed to be saying that HRE, and HREI before it, had gone too far along the road to diversity. All the signs pointed in one direction. As Trustee Jim York later recalled of that turning point in the company’s history, CEO Urstadt was determined to “undiversify.” His approach was to put most of the company’s eggs in one basket and then watch the basket. What should go into that basket? Neighborhood shopping centers, especially ones anchored by supermarkets and featuring such basics as drug stores and personal service businesses such as barbershops, were more likely to negotiate the ups and downs of the economy and still remain upright. Even in hard times, people had to eat and get their hair cut. So it would be back to meat and potatoes basics in its most literal sense. If the Trust chose well among potential shopping center acquisitions and effectively managed what it chose, adding value by making attractive and practical renovations, securing the right mix of tenants, and negotiating the best possible leases with them, HRE could go on paying steady dividends while generating capital appreciation. Ultimately that’s what it was all about. The Trust hadn’t missed a dividend yet since its formation in 1969, and there wasn’t going to be a first time on Charles J. Urstadt’s watch. Urstadt was clearly going to put his imprint on HRE Properties, but it wasn’t going to be a one-man show. Far from it. Urstadt was of the old school that said you bring in the best people and then let them do what you hired them to do. Early on he set out the criteria for choosing Trust personnel, and they remain the same today: 1. You have to be grounded with an education in business and law and economics. 2. You have to be raised in a real estate atmosphere. 3. You have to stay in the business and follow it as a career. 4. You have to know more than anyone else. “We seek intelligence among our workers,” Urstadt said. “With ambition comes competitiveness. You move from one goal to another. You set a goal and you achieve it and then you set another goal. Some people if they lose they give up. What we teach is that success has many fathers.” When asked about his operational philosophy, Urstadt was even more succinct, condensing it into the four “go-gets”: “Go get the money. Go get the property. Go get the tenants. Go get the rent.” There was one other characteristic of potential Trust personnel that was vitally important to Charles J. Urstadt: he wanted them to want to “own” their work in more than just a metaphorical sense. Urstadt wanted everyone connected to the Trust to act as if he or she had a personal stake in its success because, in fact, they actually did. His main complaint about the old guard among the Trustees and management was that they “did not have their own skin in the game.” They didn’t “have their own savings and their own equity” tied to a healthy bottom line. “It’s the difference between owning your own car and renting a car.” Self-interest was always the best motivator. The best way to get Trust personnel to care just as much about HRE’s financial success as did its shareholders was for them to be shareholders, with holdings as large as possible. Consequently, employee and Trustee stock ownership plans would always be a significant part of this REIT under Urstadt’s management. In January 1991, HRE began to implement this policy, increasing the potential shares in its stock option plan from 300,000 to 450,000, and adding an annual grant of 1,000 shares to non-employee Trustees. Urstadt also anticipated by many years the more recent criticisms in the financial press about possible conflicts of interest between the exercising of managerial stock options and the conduct of a company’s business. He took pains to see to it that the Trust was always managed so as to increase shareholder value and genuine company profitability, not just to produce gaudy numbers from quarter to quarter that temporarily inflated the price of shares, provoking stock analysts to run to their crystal balls and ultimately benefiting mostly insiders holding stock options. Then there was the matter of the Trust’s dividend policy. Setting it higher than was reasonable might temporarily increase the value of the stock, making shareholders happy, at least for a while. But was that a good business decision? The real estate business is an ongoing enterprise, not a short-run contest to see how good one can look from quarter to quarter. Urstadt’s idea was to build the business along sound lines, not to drain it of needed resources for short-term payouts when those resources were needed to invest in new properties and upgrade old ones to spur their future growth. At the Trustees meeting on September 19, 1990, Urstadt created the guidelines that HRE would henceforth use to set the quarterly dividend. He told the Board that for the first three quarters of that fiscal year the $1.15 in dividends that had been paid out had “exceeded funds from operations by about $.10 a share.” HRE’s CEO felt that the issue was important enough to the shareholders to spell out in a press release: “Today’s difficult real estate market and uncertain outlook for the economy make it prudent that we provide for contingencies and for future growth. Beginning in fiscal 1991, the Trustees expect to declare dividends at levels not exceeding the Trust’s funds from operations taking into account historic and expected fiscal results. HRE believes funds from operations to be the most significant indicator of the trust’s performance.” The new HRE was anxious to communicate to its shareholders that this was no longer the staid and static real estate investment trust that Merrill Lynch had created in 1969. What better way to do that than through the pages of its annual report? Any company’s annual report is a statement, often made with powerful, persuasive images, about what it is, how it sees itself and where it aims to go. In several of the HREI reports, the only photographs were of the Trustees, a group of well dressed, predominantly late middle aged, prosperous looking gentlemen who could easily have been Wall Street bond traders. The message conveyed through these images was: “We know what we’re doing and your money is in good hands. We’re going to do this year just what we did last year. Don’t worry, there’s nothing new under the sun” And the text and financial data presented enhanced that picture. The 1989 Annual Report was the first under HRE’s new management. In every way it announced a new period in the Trust’s history. ......................................................... Urstadt concluded his message to shareholders in a direct and personal way that embodied the new attitude to be found at HRE Properties: “My personal commitment to the Trust as the owner of 13% of the outstanding shares indicates my confidence that its values are sound and that I am committed to creating the highest possible future values for all shareholders.” And in the 1991 Annual Report, Urstadt’s message to shareholders began not with “To Our Shareholders” but with “Dear Fellow Shareholders . . .” It concluded: “My personal commitment to HRE is unwavering. I own 855,800 shares, or more than 16% of the total, and this includes 25,000 shares I purchased this month.”
FORMAT: Softcover
By Gene Brown- don't email gbrown please!
The following excerpt comes directly in the book after a dramatic account of the attempted hostile takeover of Urstadt Biddle’s predecessor, HRE Properties, by a large real estate organization (latter a REIT) called Kimco. The fending off of that attempt and the elevation of Charles J. Urstadt to CEO marked the beginning of Urstadt Biddle Properties’ modern history and set the tone and general direction for the business that remains in effect today: Chapter Four: A New Business Plan The elevation of Charles J. Urstadt to CEO of HRE Properties in 1989 was occasioned by the fight to keep the company from being swallowed up by Kimco. But the ultimate significance of the move went far beyond HRE’s prolonged struggle to remain independent. In fact, the consequences of Urstadt’s new position for HRE’s ongoing operations would completely overshadow Kimco’s attempt at a hostile takeover. Urstadt did not just represent a new face at the top of HRE. He was not at the helm just to guide it through the current storm. He was a man with a plan, and stood for an entirely new direction in the company’s business. Indeed, at their meeting of September 19, 1989, the Trustees not only voted to make Urstadt HRE’s CEO, they also voted acceptance of his business plan to redirect the Trust, geographically consolidating its holdings in the Northeast while focusing on the acquisition and management of neighborhood shopping centers. Urstadt dedicated himself to fending off Kimco because, first of all, he firmly believed that HRE could maximize its profits by staying small. For Urstadt, it was a matter of basic business philosophy. “In large companies, entrepreneurial decisions do not exist,” Urstadt, who had learned from experience, said. “Only the political perspective does. People try to impress the boss as they seek various perks.” Having served at or near the top in several major real estate firms, as the head of New York State’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and as the first Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Battery Park City Authority, where he had to deal with government bureaucracy at the city, state and federal levels, Urstadt knew what large organizations entailed. Size mattered, and he wanted to keep HRE small, flexible and responsive. Related to size was distance – the geographical distance from a real estate company to the properties it owned and managed. Shrink the distance and you achieve greater efficiency and with it, lower operating and managerial costs. Urstadt couldn’t abide the Trust’s scattershot approach to property location and the lack of real estate business savvy that attitude reflected. Years later he would criticize the Boards’ simplistic concept that had them putting “two charts in each report: one was a chart of the United States and the other was a chart of the diversity of its property types. It seemed like the board was trying to color in all the states.” Urstadt’s grandfather, who had influenced him to go into real estate, had told him you ought to be able to walk to what you owned. In this day and age that was no longer always practical. But management should still be able to reach their company’s properties with no more than an hour or two behind the wheel, Urstadt believed. Ultimately that would be refined to a geographical criterion for HRE acquisitions that confined most of the Trust’s new investment possibilities to within about a 50-75 mile radius of corporate headquarters, a standard for acquisitions that remains in effect today at Urstadt Biddle Properties. As with geography, so with diversity. Scattering HRE’s property over multiple types of real estate investment was not likely to produce the best result. Concentrating on one sector in the business, ideally one more insulated from the inevitable boom and bust cycles that affected office buildings, was a better bet. The investment also ought to be in something that best matched the experience and skills of HRE’s personnel. Retail properties had good long-term prospects in the late 1980s and there were already people on board at the Trust who had experience in that area. Concentrating on the ownership of such properties would further hone the skills of HRE personnel, paying handsome dividends in lower management and operational costs. Furthermore, the market recently seemed to be saying that HRE, and HREI before it, had gone too far along the road to diversity. All the signs pointed in one direction. As Trustee Jim York later recalled of that turning point in the company’s history, CEO Urstadt was determined to “undiversify.” His approach was to put most of the company’s eggs in one basket and then watch the basket. What should go into that basket? Neighborhood shopping centers, especially ones anchored by supermarkets and featuring such basics as drug stores and personal service businesses such as barbershops, were more likely to negotiate the ups and downs of the economy and still remain upright. Even in hard times, people had to eat and get their hair cut. So it would be back to meat and potatoes basics in its most literal sense. If the Trust chose well among potential shopping center acquisitions and effectively managed what it chose, adding value by making attractive and practical renovations, securing the right mix of tenants, and negotiating the best possible leases with them, HRE could go on paying steady dividends while generating capital appreciation. Ultimately that’s what it was all about. The Trust hadn’t missed a dividend yet since its formation in 1969, and there wasn’t going to be a first time on Charles J. Urstadt’s watch. Urstadt was clearly going to put his imprint on HRE Properties, but it wasn’t going to be a one-man show. Far from it. Urstadt was of the old school that said you bring in the best people and then let them do what you hired them to do. Early on he set out the criteria for choosing Trust personnel, and they remain the same today: 1. You have to be grounded with an education in business and law and economics. 2. You have to be raised in a real estate atmosphere. 3. You have to stay in the business and follow it as a career. 4. You have to know more than anyone else. “We seek intelligence among our workers,” Urstadt said. “With ambition comes competitiveness. You move from one goal to another. You set a goal and you achieve it and then you set another goal. Some people if they lose they give up. What we teach is that success has many fathers.” When asked about his operational philosophy, Urstadt was even more succinct, condensing it into the four “go-gets”: “Go get the money. Go get the property. Go get the tenants. Go get the rent.” There was one other characteristic of potential Trust personnel that was vitally important to Charles J. Urstadt: he wanted them to want to “own” their work in more than just a metaphorical sense. Urstadt wanted everyone connected to the Trust to act as if he or she had a personal stake in its success because, in fact, they actually did. His main complaint about the old guard among the Trustees and management was that they “did not have their own skin in the game.” They didn’t “have their own savings and their own equity” tied to a healthy bottom line. “It’s the difference between owning your own car and renting a car.” Self-interest was always the best motivator. The best way to get Trust personnel to care just as much about HRE’s financial success as did its shareholders was for them to be shareholders, with holdings as large as possible. Consequently, employee and Trustee stock ownership plans would always be a significant part of this REIT under Urstadt’s management. In January 1991, HRE began to implement this policy, increasing the potential shares in its stock option plan from 300,000 to 450,000, and adding an annual grant of 1,000 shares to non-employee Trustees. Urstadt also anticipated by many years the more recent criticisms in the financial press about possible conflicts of interest between the exercising of managerial stock options and the conduct of a company’s business. He took pains to see to it that the Trust was always managed so as to increase shareholder value and genuine company profitability, not just to produce gaudy numbers from quarter to quarter that temporarily inflated the price of shares, provoking stock analysts to run to their crystal balls and ultimately benefiting mostly insiders holding stock options. Then there was the matter of the Trust’s dividend policy. Setting it higher than was reasonable might temporarily increase the value of the stock, making shareholders happy, at least for a while. But was that a good business decision? The real estate business is an ongoing enterprise, not a short-run contest to see how good one can look from quarter to quarter. Urstadt’s idea was to build the business along sound lines, not to drain it of needed resources for short-term payouts when those resources were needed to invest in new properties and upgrade old ones to spur their future growth. At the Trustees meeting on September 19, 1990, Urstadt created the guidelines that HRE would henceforth use to set the quarterly dividend. He told the Board that for the first three quarters of that fiscal year the $1.15 in dividends that had been paid out had “exceeded funds from operations by about $.10 a share.” HRE’s CEO felt that the issue was important enough to the shareholders to spell out in a press release: “Today’s difficult real estate market and uncertain outlook for the economy make it prudent that we provide for contingencies and for future growth. Beginning in fiscal 1991, the Trustees expect to declare dividends at levels not exceeding the Trust’s funds from operations taking into account historic and expected fiscal results. HRE believes funds from operations to be the most significant indicator of the trust’s performance.” The new HRE was anxious to communicate to its shareholders that this was no longer the staid and static real estate investment trust that Merrill Lynch had created in 1969. What better way to do that than through the pages of its annual report? Any company’s annual report is a statement, often made with powerful, persuasive images, about what it is, how it sees itself and where it aims to go. In several of the HREI reports, the only photographs were of the Trustees, a group of well dressed, predominantly late middle aged, prosperous looking gentlemen who could easily have been Wall Street bond traders. The message conveyed through these images was: “We know what we’re doing and your money is in good hands. We’re going to do this year just what we did last year. Don’t worry, there’s nothing new under the sun” And the text and financial data presented enhanced that picture. The 1989 Annual Report was the first under HRE’s new management. In every way it announced a new period in the Trust’s history. ......................................................... Urstadt concluded his message to shareholders in a direct and personal way that embodied the new attitude to be found at HRE Properties: “My personal commitment to the Trust as the owner of 13% of the outstanding shares indicates my confidence that its values are sound and that I am committed to creating the highest possible future values for all shareholders.” And in the 1991 Annual Report, Urstadt’s message to shareholders began not with “To Our Shareholders” but with “Dear Fellow Shareholders . . .” It concluded: “My personal commitment to HRE is unwavering. I own 855,800 shares, or more than 16% of the total, and this includes 25,000 shares I purchased this month.”
FORMAT: Hardcover
By Susan Foley
Entrepreneurs Inside: Accelerating Business Growth with Corporate Entrepreneurs was inspired by an extraordinary group of individuals who stepped up to the challenge of building new growth businesses in their organizations. Building a new business inside an existing organization is a daunting task. It takes a unique combination of competencies to lead these initiatives. The book describes the competencies of successful corporate entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leaders. It also reveals the obstacles and hidden barriers these executives encountered as they created the entrepreneurial culture necessary for success. Most valuably, the book offers a practical look at corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, and execution.
FORMAT: Softcover
By Susan Foley
Entrepreneurs Inside: Accelerating Business Growth with Corporate Entrepreneurs was inspired by an extraordinary group of individuals who stepped up to the challenge of building new growth businesses in their organizations. Building a new business inside an existing organization is a daunting task. It takes a unique combination of competencies to lead these initiatives. The book describes the competencies of successful corporate entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leaders. It also reveals the obstacles and hidden barriers these executives encountered as they created the entrepreneurial culture necessary for success. Most valuably, the book offers a practical look at corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, and execution.
FORMAT: Hardcover
|