(For more retail coverage, click GlobeSt.com/RETAIL.)

JENKINTOWN, PA-An hour after his appointment as CEO andpresident of American Financial Realty Trust, Harold Potedominated a conference call with Wall Street analysts to spell outkey initiatives that he said will bring discipline to the companyand "take it back to its roots." Pote replaces Nicholas Schorsch,an AFR founder and former president, vice chairman and CEO.

Discipline indeed. Over the next 18 to 24 months, Pote said AFRwill dispose of non-core and selected high-profile assets thatrepresent good market opportunities for expected net proceeds of upto $2 billion. Some of the proceeds will be used to help reducedebt toward a goal of achieving an overall debt to asset leverageratio of between 60% and 65%. An analyst noted that the dollarvalue of property sales represents about half of the company'scurrent assets.

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.