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  1. #11
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Google and Facebook employees are flocking to a startup that's raised ~$70 million to shake up the real estate world




    • Jun. 23, 2016, 1:48 PM
    • 35,632


    Cadre's headquarters is to the 5th floor of the Puck building in Manhattan.Wikimedia Commons


    A few miles east of Manhattan, in Astoria Queens, a suite of residential buildings that house millennials and retail stores was recently purchased for $60 million.


    But it wasn't a traditional real estate transaction. The 20 investors weren't private equity funds; the property wasn't even listed by a big brokerage firm. And the entire process, from the day it was listed to time it was completed, took a matter of weeks rather than months.


    The four-building property was listed on Cadre, a 40-person startup that has been quietly working out of the Puck building in Manhattan's Nolita neighborhood since late 2014. There, a team of former Square, Google and Facebook executives have gathered to shake up the real-estate world.

    Ryan Williams is the CEO and cofounder of CadreCadre

    One hire was apparently so important to Twitter that CEO Jack Dorsey is said to have flown to New York to try and reverse the employee's decision. The employee stayed at Cadre.


    The team is led by a 27-year-old former Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Harvard alumn, Ryan Williams, who has attracted a team of high-profile investors and advisors. Over the past year and a half, Cadre has raised $68 million from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Goldman Sachs, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, DST's Yuri Milner, real-estate moguls Jared and Joshua Kushner, and others. Advisors include TPG's co-CEO Jon Winkelreid and SL Green's president Andrew Mathias.


    Cadre is a platform where approved sellers ("operators") can apply to post carefully vetted commercial real estate deals, from stores to apartment buildings to offices. A network of high-wealth individuals or "qualified purchasers" who want to make real estate investments — but haven't previously had access to deals — can drop $500,000 or more on individual properties. Currently, all of Cadre's listed properties are located in the US, but the startup plans to expand internationally.


    "If I said to you, 'How would you go about buying that building over there?' You'd probably say, 'I don't know,'"
    If I said to you, 'How would you go about buying that building over there?' You'd probably say, 'I don't know.'

    Williams explained Cadre's opportunity to Tech Insider. "If you do know, it's probably because you know a fund. But even then, if you were able to get to that building and that fund, then how do you see what's going on with your investment?"


    To invest in real estate, wealthy individuals typically need to invest in a real estate fund, which then makes all the decisions on which buildings to invest in, without providing many details to the backers. The investors' money is then tied up for five to seven years, with no opportunity to sell their interest in the meantime and no real-time updates are provided.


    Cadre's vision is to offer an alternative that makes the real estate market more like the stock market. People can purchase portions of a specific building, the same way they can choose a specific company to buy stock in. Cadre investors can't currently sell their positions at any time though, but that may change in the future.


    "Funds are opaque and you don't have a good sense of what's happening underneath the hood," Williams said.

    "Cadre's mission is to create a more efficient economy where we can connect the world's buyers and sellers in opaque assets that have been inaccessible to many."


    How Cadre's platform works


    The Cadre team. Cadre
    On Cadre, the platform looks like an e-commerce store — just with price tags ranging between $50 million and $250 million.

    When you click on one of the buildings, you're taken to a beautiful landing page full of stats and information that's presented like a baseball card, with a transaction overview, executive summary, the purchase price, how much equity is available, a dynamic FAQ section and more.


    For sellers, Cadre is an opportunity to get a deal done relatively quickly and cheaply — if your property is accepted (only about 1% of everything Cadre's team vets gets listed on the platform). Cadre has less overhead than many funds, and thus Cadre says it can charge sellers about 50% less in fees.

    Cadre

    "The typical fee model is, there’s an element of a double promote, or a 'carry,' like 2 and 20, that a larger fund would charge," Williams explained. "Then there’s carry that an operator would charge. At Cadre we’re basically eliminating the 2 and 20 that happens at the fund level."


    "2 and 20" means funds typically charge investors 2% in annual fees and then 20% of any profits in exchange for access to the deals and management of their assets.


    Once you've found an appealing Cadre property, the investing process is quick. Cadre asks how much money you'd like to invest, and the member plugs in an amount ranging from $500,000 to tens of millions.

    Williams says most of its 100 or so members have invested in two or three properties on Cadre, and the platform has already closed hundreds of millions of dollars in total volume.



    Imagine each of these products is a building with a $50 to $250 million price tag. That's what Cadre's platform looks like for the 100 buyers and sellers that are currently able to use its platform. Amazon


    Cadre then asks who you are investing on behalf of, yourself or an entity. If it's an entity, is it one in the US and is it tax exempt?


    Then the investor requests allocation. Within a matter of weeks, they'll hear back from Cadre on the approved amount they can invest in the deal. Sometimes it's less than the investor wanted; historically, Cadre says its deals have been over-subscribed.


    But if a listing does start to struggle, there's a backup plan.

    Cadre is partnered with an unnamed family office in New York City (Williams says it's not Trump) that gives Williams' team access to $250 million to guarantee funding on the platform.


    Tech Insider was able to view a slightly outdated version of the Cadre platform in the company's headquarters, but Cadre declined to share screenshots for this story.


    The CEO who's grabbing top talent from Google, Square and Facebook


    Jared and Joshua Kushner are Ryan Williams' Cadre co-founders.The New York Observer, Photo by Patrick McMullan


    Williams is a Louisiana native who has always been entrepreneurial. When he was twelve he started a sports tech company and sold it during his freshman year at Harvard, where he met his Cadre co-founder, Joshua Kushner.


    Kushner is also the cofounder of health insurance startup Oscar and runs a startup investment firm, Thrive Capital.

    His brother Jared Kushner, who owns the New York Observer and runs his family's real estate business Kushner Properties, is the third Cadre co-founder.


    In college, Williams started a real estate business that used technology to track homes as they came to auction. He ran that business on the side in the late 2000s, while he worked full-time at Goldman Sachs. He later joined Blackstone's real estate private equity group.


    Andrew Borovsky was Square's senior director of product and he worked for Apple. Now he's Cadre's head of product. LinkedIn


    In 2013, Williams discussed the idea for Cadre with Jared Kushner. The Kushner brothers became his first investors and advisors.


    The Kushners and Williams believe Cadre's opportunity is massive. It's easy to imagine the platform expanding to other tiers of investors and to other financial services.


    "Cadre is building a technology platform that democratizes investing in an asset class that has traditionally been incredibly difficult to access," Joshua Kushner told Tech Insider in an emailed statement.


    "I think that’s going to be a trend you see moving forward — big industries from heath care to financial services, to the political world have been controlled by a few large players, and tech will evolve to completely revolutionize them," Williams explained.


    "Real estate is one of the last frontiers ... This is not a startup with a niche consumer focus. This is fundamentally an opportunity to transform the buying and selling experience."


    He added, "We’re chipping away at these gatekeepers who haven’t really been pushed yet."


    http://www.businessinsider.com/what-...e-deals-2016-6
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  2. #12
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Outstanding. Totally support this idea.
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  3. #13
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Kushner family in Beijing: 'Invest $500,000 and immigrate' to US

    Posted: May 06, 2017 11:34 AM PDT Updated: May 06, 2017 11:34 AM PDT
    By Jackie Wattles and Serenitie Wang

    BEIJING (CNNMoney) -- The Kushner family hopes to lure investments from wealthy business owners in China with the promise of American visas.


    Nicole Kushner Meyer, the sister of White House adviser and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, spoke at an event in Beijing on Saturday. She was marketing a Kushner-owned property in New Jersey -- invest in the development and get into the United States on a so-called EB-5 visa.


    The EB-5 visa allows immigrants a path to a green card if they invest more than $500,000 in a project that creates jobs in the United States.


    An ad for the event, held at a Ritz-Carlton hotel, said "Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States."


    The EB-5 visa has been used by the Trump and Kushner family businesses. Foreigners, particularly wealthy Chinese nationals, have used the EB-5 program as a ticket into the states. And that promise has helped attract foreign investments for U.S. real estate projects.


    President Trump has taken an anti-immigration stance and vowed to severely tighten the use of work visas. The EB-5 program has come under fire by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.


    Lawmakers say the program essentially sells citizenship to high-income foreigners.


    On Saturday, potential investors in the Kushner project were told they should act quickly because possible policy changes to the EB-5 program might raise the required minimum investment.


    Nicole Kushner Meyer also told the crowd how her grandfather immigrated to the United States and built a business from the ground up.


    And she mentioned Jared's new position in the White House -- though there were no overt references to President Trump.


    "In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO, and recently moved to Washington to join the administration," she said.


    Jared Kushner serves as an influential senior adviser to the president. Trump has at various times said he would lead or play a key role in many policy areas from foreign affairs to business innovation.


    The event was meant to draw investors for 1 Journal Square, a $976.4 million residential and commercial project underway in New Jersey.
    The company says about 15% of it will be funded through the EB-5 program.

    Jared Kushner has stepped away from the business since taking a key role in Trump's White House.

    The Beijing event, which was organized by Chinese immigration agency Qiaowai, was open to the public.

    Reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times attended but said they were later asked to leave.

    Kushner Companies declined to comment. Qiaowai could not be immediately reached for comment.

    --CNNMoney's Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.

    http://www.nbc-2.com/story/35360060/...mmigrate-to-us

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  4. #14
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Eyebrows raised over Kushner family pitch in China for Journal Square towers financing



    Renderings show new plans for two high-rises planned for a lot adjacent to the Journal Square PATH hub. Courtesy of Woods Bagot
    Terrence T. McDonald | The Jersey Journal


    By Margaret Schmidt | The Jersey Journal
    Email the author | Follow on Twitter
    on May 06, 2017 at 2:02 PM, updated May 06, 2017 at 2:03 PM


    A Kushner family pitch for Chinese investors to help finance the planned One Journal Square towers is once again putting a spotlight on potential conflicts of interest for the first family, according to reports by the Washington Post and New York Times.

    Jared Kushner's sister, Nicole Meyer, made the pitch in Beijing for $150 million in financing, saying it would mean a lot to her family, the Times reported.


    Jared Kushner has divested himself from the project now that he serves as an advisor to the president.


    The pitch, to 100 potential investors meeting Saturday afternoon at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, highlighted the controversial EB-5 program, which offers a path to citizenship for foreigners who invest at least a half-million dollars in American development projects, the Times said. The Washington Post report referred to it as an "investor visa.''


    The project is on a long-vacant lot adjacent to the Journal Square Transportation Center where a strip of stores and the old Hotel on the Square once stood.

    Under other owners, the project languished for more than a decade, leaving the eyesore lot behind chain-link fencing.


    Recently, signs of construction have started to pop up.


    The project is across Sip Avenue from the old Jersey Journal building, 30 Journal Square, which was bought by a Kushner entity in 2013.

    http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2..._in_china.html

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  5. #15
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Rich Chinese Race to Apply for a U.S. Golden Visa

    A current plan by the Kushner family to refinance and reconstruct its New York office building at 666 Fifth Avenue is seeking $850 million in EB-5 funding . . .
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  6. #16
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  7. #17
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    FEB 22, 2017 @ 08:05 AM 31,986

    Wealth Snapshot: Breaking Down Jared Kushner And His Family's $1.8 Billion Fortune

    Chloe Sorvino , FORBES STAFF

    I cover the world's most successful entrepreneurs.

    This story appears in the February 28, 2017 issue of Forbes. Subscribe

    AMONG THE NEW FACES
    in the Oval Office: Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband and a senior advisor to President Trump. The position makes Kushner, 36, one of the most powerful people in the country; he has long belonged to one of its richest clans.

    The Kushner Clan: Jared (left), Josh (center) and Charles (right).

    Before his sojourn in Washington, D.C., he ran his family's real estate empire, which includes stakes in trophy properties like 666 Fifth Avenue and Manhattan's Puck Building, since 2007.

    In 2005, his father, Charles, now 62, went to prison for tax evasion, election fraud and witness tampering.

    The next year, Jared paid about $10 million for the now online-only New York Observer newspaper.

    His brother, Josh, 31, is no slouch himself. In 2012, he cofounded a health insurance unicorn, Oscar, which, ironically, was built on the back of legislation President Trump has vowed to kill: ObamaCare.

    Here's a breakdown of the Kushners' wealth.




    The Kushners own 13 million square feet of residential, commercial and retail space in six states, including stakes in the below buildings, which are among their crown jewels.


    666 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
    Stake Estimated Value: $360 million

    80-90 Maiden Lane, Manhattan
    Stake Estimated Value: $75 million


    AT&T Building, Chicago
    Stake Estimated Value: $49 million


    Puck Building, Manhattan
    Stake Estimated Value: $200 million


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloeso.../#4d4fa9366831
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  8. #18
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    By AIMEE PICCHI MONEYWATCH November 21, 2016, 2:11 PM

    The billion-dollar Obamacare business with Trump family ties

    Joshua Kushner speaks in an interview at the Digital-Life-Design Conference at the HVB Forum on January 19, 2015, in Munich, Germany.

    KAI-UWE WÄRNER/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP IMAGES




    Donald Trump has long ignored the conventional wisdom about never doing business with family. Yet the president-elect might soon get a lesson in how familial ties can complicate commerce.

    Trump has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, a vow that could threaten Oscar Insurance, a $2.7 billion technology startup co-founded by Ivanka Trump’s brother-in-law, Joshua Kushner. Oscar has also received funding from Trump adviser Peter Thiel, who could face a loss on his investment if Oscar folds under a Trump-led overhaul of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

    Just three years after it was founded, Oscar appears to be ailing, but it’s not only because of Trump’s vow to dismantle the health care law. Oscar has struggled to make good on its promise to revolutionize health insurance, with Bloomberg News reporting that it had lost $45 million in just three states during the third quarter. The company is also leaving two markets, New Jersey and the Dallas area, as it seeks to manage costs.

    In a blog post to Oscar customers following Trump’s victory, Kushner and co-founder Mario Schlosser wrote that they continue to believe that providing universal, affordable health care is “ethically right,” but that Obamacare has shortcomings that “any new government would have had to address.”


    “Some of the current proposals being discussed would surely encourage more of the consumerization and individualization that are required to create real competition across the entire healthcare industry, and thus force necessary improvements,” they wrote.


    In an email to CBS MoneyWatch, a spokesman for Oscar said the company isn’t commenting beyond what Kushner and Schlosser wrote in their blog post.


    The problems encountered by Oscar aren’t unique to the startup. Other insurers participating in Obamacare have also incurred higher-than-expected costs, with the pool of individual customers tending to be older and sicker than originally projected. Aetna (AET) and Humana (HUM) are among the U.S. insurers that have exited the program’s health-care exchanges amid cost issues.


    Kushner and Schlosser pointed to what they view as a significant problem with Obamacare: “weak enforcement” of the individual mandate, which states that every American must obtain health insurance or else face a penalty amounting to as much as $2,085 for a family. But millions of Americans remain uninsured because in many cases the penalty remains less expensive than purchasing health insurance through the exchanges.


    Trump campaigned on repealing the individual mandate, stating in his policy positions that “no person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to.”


    Oscar’s headaches may only be beginning, however. Although it’s unclear whether Trump will seek to completely overturn Obamacare, his administration is likely to challenge aspects of the health care overhaul. For instance, with support of the Republican-controlled Congress, Trump could approve legislation that would eliminate the tax credits that help millions of Americans afford insurance plans through Obamacare’s exchanges.

    Play VIDEO
    Ivanka Trump zinged over marketing of bracelet worn on 60 Minutes


    If that occurs, many Obamacare customers would likely drop their insurance plans as their premiums become less affordable. That could significantly reduce revenue at Oscar and other insurers, leading to significant operating challenges.

    Still, Kushner and Schlosser painted a positive picture of the changes that they see through the lens of the new administration, writing that the plans proposed by Congressional Republicans “would enable individuals to buy insurance with pre-tax dollars, just like employers have always been able to do.”


    But the survival of Obamacare’s tax credits appears central to their vision, with the co-founders noting that the individual insurance market “can be made to work through a smart combination of continuous coverage provisions and tax credits.”


    Joshua Kushner is the younger brother of Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, who could end up as a top White House advisor. Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and a Trump supporter, is among the investors who have provided more than $700 million in funding to Oscar, according to Crunchbase.


    Both Jared and Joshua Kushner are graduates of Harvard, the highly selective Ivy League college which received a pledge of $2.5 million from their father, real estate developer Charles Kushner. At Harvard, Joshua Kushner was roommates with Alexander Blankfein, the son of Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein.


    After graduation, Kushner worked at Goldman Sachs before attending business school and later co-founding Oscar.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-t...car-insurance/

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  9. #19
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Jared Kushner's ex-convict father back running New York property empire along with two fellow inmates

    'It can’t hurt to be doing business with Jared Kushner’s family. It’s a road to the administration.' - Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Centre




    Charles Kushner (C) wades though the media with his legal team and wife to the US District Courthouse August 18, 2004 - Getty

    It’s hard to find work right out of prison. But Avram Lebor and Richard Goettlich walked from their Alabama penitentiary into top jobs at the real estate company then run by Jared Kushner, now President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. The two men, convicted in separate sprawling fraud schemes, were hired several years ago by his father, Charles Kushner, who had been locked up in the same federal prison with them.

    As 36-year-old Jared Kushner settles into a White House role that includes personnel decisions and Middle East peace, the most extensive organisational experience he has to draw from is his lifetime at the closely held family real estate company, where his father is once again deeply involved. It’s a business where, like Trump’s, family and loyalty loom large. Management at Kushner Cos. has been mercurial, its feuds bruising and its political influence considerable. Recent joint ventures and investments expanded by Jared could lead to opportunities for unseen influence. Given the company’s history, ethics lawyers say, such opportunities merit close watching.


    “It can’t hurt to be doing business with Jared Kushner’s family,” said Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Centre, a nonpartisan organisation focused on election laws. “It’s a road to the administration. At the very least they’re going to have an inside track.”


    • READ MORE


    Donald Trump's son-in-law under fire over conflicts of interest


    In theory, both Kushner and Trump have dealt with the risk of conflicts of interest. Trump is turning over control of his business to his sons. Kushner has gone further, selling his share in many family assets. His lawyer, Blake Roberts, noted that the sale follows federal law and has been approved by the Office of Government Ethics.

    Still, the purchasers are his brother and mother, and some ethicists say the potential for conflict remains; Kushner seems likely to know where the money is invested. His father, convicted in 2005 of witness tampering, illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion, remains central to the company.


    Charles, 62, built Kushner Cos. as a simple business: buying and refurbishing suburban garden apartments on the East Coast. Since 2007 his son has transformed it into a flashier, more complex entity, controlling $7.5 billion of assets, according to Real Capital Analytics. It got there by trading $1.8 billion worth of the apartments for office and retail properties in Manhattan and Brooklyn, a leap that’s brought in Chinese investors, a slate of equity partners and almost $4 billion of debt, much owed to international banks.

    Also of Jared’s invention: an expanded credit arm announced after the election that will invest $1 billion into the debt structures of other people’s deals over the next five years.

    The fund has few regulatory or public disclosure obligations.

    READ MORE





    Charles completed his two-year prison sentence in 2006 for making illegal campaign contributions and hiring a prostitute to entrap his brother-in-law. Company officials say that while it has a president, Laurent Morali, Charles has been helping shape the company’s redevelopment plans, arranging deals and negotiating with officials.

    “I talk to Charlie a lot. He’s working harder than he’s worked in a long time,” said Alan Hammer, a lawyer who has known Kushner for more than 35 years, represents the company and served as its chairman while Kushner was behind bars.


    Working alongside him as the firm’s director of acquisitions is Lebor, 68, Kushner’s fellow inmate who joined the company in 2009. Lebor and Goettlich, 61, were both in the prison when Charles arrived in April 2005.

    Lebor was serving a seven-year sentence after he fraudulently promoted himself as a lender and mortgage broker and collected $9 million in advance fees while promising to obtain $2.5 billion in loans for dozens of projects that were never funded.

    Goettlich got 10 years after pleading guilty to securities fraud, money laundering and tax evasion in 1998. At his family’s firm, he’d defrauded thousands of investors in a Ponzi scheme involving office equipment leases. An initial order in 1999 to repay $271 million in fines and refunds was at the time the third-largest penalty ever imposed in a securities fraud case.

    Goettlich’s son started a four-and-a-half-year stint at Kushner Cos. in May 2008, first as an intern, later as an associate in its hotel subsidiary, according to his LinkedIn profile. Goettlich, whose sentence ended in December 2008, joined the firm in early 2011 and is a leasing consultant.

    Lebor was released from prison in August 2009 and joined Kushner Cos., which he frequently represents at events hosted by the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group.

    A Kushner spokesman said the company is proud to have hired Lebor and Goettlich, along with other ex-convicts, as part of its second-chance program. Charles is also a board member of Getting Out & Staying Out, which mentors young inmates at Rikers Island.

    Jared is joining a Republican White House, whereas Charles, the son of Holocaust survivors, built his business partly by becoming a big donor to Democrats. In 2000 he bundled $1 million in contributions for the Democratic National Committee, and the following year he became the largest fundraiser for Jim McGreevey’s campaign to become New Jersey governor. McGreevey named Kushner to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and later nominated him to become its chairman—a position rife with real estate business opportunities.


    Before he was approved as chairman, however, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, then led by Chris Christie, charged Kushner with disguising campaign donations as business expenses, tax evasion and hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law. He sent a videotape of their encounter to his own sister.


    His father’s imprisonment in 2005 thrust Jared into a principal role at the company at the age of 24, and strengthened his intense family loyalty. He frequently flew to Alabama for weekend visits and spoke out in the press to defend his father. When Jared completed his biggest deal in 2007, purchasing 666 Fifth Avenue, a Manhattan office tower, for a then-record $1.8 billion, his newly released father was at his side for the announcement. For years, Jared carried a wallet Charles had made for him in prison.


    Some describe Jared as like his father in ambition and drive, but softer—Charlie on decaf, in the words of a friend. As publisher of the New York Observer, Jared repeatedly ordered an editor to do a story critical of a real estate developer who had crossed him. The editor, Elizabeth Spiers, wrote in a blog post that she twice assigned reporters to the story, but when neither found evidence to back up Kushner’s accusations, he backed down.


    Under Jared, the company has sought to wield political influence in a more nuanced way than under his father. In Jersey City, where Kushner Cos. has invested in five major projects in recent years, both Jared and his father have a close relationship with Mayor Steve Fulop. Fulop has received glowing coverage in the New York Observer, and as the Kushners were developing Trump Tower in Jersey City in 2014, they hired one of Fulop’s closest political strategists to work as an expediter on the project.


    The Kushners and their partners in Jersey City, the KABR Group, also quietly became major financial backers of Progressive New Jersey Inc., a nonprofit that Fulop’s allies helped set up in 2014 to promote worker safety and other issues. Although the group does not disclose its donors, two people involved with the organization said that members of the Kushner-KABR partnership made a $100,000 donation.

    (A Kushner spokesman declined to comment on the donation.) Last year, when the mayor was publicly mulling entering the New Jersey governor’s race, Progressive New Jersey made a $400,000 contribution to a pro-Fulop political action committee. After a public outcry, that donation was returned.




    Those moves came as the Fulop administration has been negotiating possible subsidies for the Kushner projects.

    Although Fulop has been critical of using taxpayer funds to underwrite developers, Jersey City has been in discussions with the Kushners and KABR to provide $10 million in redevelopment area bonds to help finance the project, according to documents filed with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

    Mayor Fulop’s office said he was unaware that the Kushners had employed his chief strategist to work on development projects in the city or donated to Progressive New Jersey Inc. Jennifer Morrilli, his press secretary, said Fulop had never received financial support from the Kushners. Any requests the Kushner companies make for tax abatements or bond subsidies will be decided strictly according to city policy, Morrilli said. KABR didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Now that Trump and Kushner have taken office, the potential for conflicts has grown.


    In the weeks before the election, Kushner refinanced $370 million of debt on stores in Midtown Manhattan, with Deutsche Bank taking on $285 million, documents show.

    This mirrors a relationship with the president, whose companies owe more than $300 million to Deutsche Bank, his biggest lender. Unrelated to those loans, the Justice Department, which is now overseen by a Trump appointee, has been investigating Deutsche Bank.


    Days after Trump announced he was stepping down from his corporate functions, he met with Steve Roth, the head of Vornado Realty Trust, a company with deep financial ties to both the Trump and Kushner companies. Roth had been on an economic advisory council for Trump’s campaign. When the candidate raised funds for veterans, Roth contributed $50,000. And when Trump won the New York Republican primary, Roth was at the victory party.


    President Trump asked him to join a committee that will oversee the doling out of more than $100 billion in tax breaks to encourage $1 trillion in infrastructure spending—just the kind of public works spending that could bring vast benefits to real estate developers.


    Vornado has bailed both family firms out of tough situations. In 2007, when Trump was in an unhappy partnership involving two buildings, Vornado bought his Chinese partners out; today, Trump’s stake in the two buildings is his most valuable asset.


    Four years later, when Kushner’s investment in 666 Fifth Avenue was teetering near insolvency, Vornado salvaged the deal for him and now owns nearly half of the building’s office space. Jared Kushner has met with executives from state-controlled Chinese financial powerhouse Anbang Insurance Group Co. to discuss a possible redevelopment of the tower, the New York Times reported earlier this month.

    The CEO of Vornado at the time, Michael Fascitelli, donated the maximum to Trump’s campaign and now heads the investment committee of Cadre, a real estate investing startup co-founded by Jared and his brother, Joshua.

    Cadre plans to invest $1 billion from 2,000 undisclosed donors into real estate in 2017. An unidentified family office has provided $250 million to the firm to help it ensure deals. Spokesmen for Vornado and Cadre didn’t provide comment.


    Cadre’s financial ties mirror those of another of its investors: Thrive Capital, Josh Kushner’s venture firm, which had raised $1.5 billion from investors through July, to place into investments such as messaging app Slack, online-payments company Stripe, and Oscar, which sells insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Billionaire Peter Thiel, Trump’s most vocal supporter in Silicon Valley, was an early investor. Thrive, from which Jared is divesting, declined to comment.


    All of which leads ethics specialists to feel that the potential for conflicts is deep. Charles Kushner has already made at least one visit to the White House—he was in the front row at Jared’s swearing-in ceremony, flanked by his wife and Josh.


    “The perception is, if you’re interacting with his family, you’re also interacting with Jared, even if it’s indirectly,” said Andrew D. Herman, a lawyer who’s represented many members of Congress on ethics issues. “It will be impossible to know when a decision is made for policy reasons or because it benefits his family in some way.”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...-a7552496.html

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  10. #20
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    I think this Cadre is a great thing. This allows a simple way to raise money as investment rather than loans with banks to do more redevelopment. I hope they take an interest in rebuilding our inner cities and worn out communities in more rural areas. There are lots of great opportunities and projects on hold simply because it takes a lot of long-term money which just isn't available through conventional banks.
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