Shape France

The magazine was largely translated material and never got a foothold in the French market. It only sold 28,000 copies and didn’t get much amour from advertisers, according to the Post.

“The international market, based on the economy, is very challenging, especially in France,” a spokesperson for parent company American Media International told the Post, confirming that the current issue of Shape France will be le fin.

The closure of Shape France coincides with the departure of Sue Yein Butcher, one of the longest serving executives at AMI. Ms. Butcher, who was previously in charge of Mira, the company’s Spanish-language celebrity tabloid, spoke Spanish--not French. Quelle horreur!

Shape’s concept may have been a hard sell in France as well. An article about French Jenny Craig in The New York Times last summer outlined the difficulties of trying to import L'Américain style of fitness and exercise across the pond.

“A track coach well known in France walks a woman through some low-key exercises, like arm swings and biceps curls with water bottles for weights. There is much talk of breathing. Although gyms have proliferated in the last 10 years in France, rigorous exercise is still not considered a requirement of responsible adulthood the way it is here,” wrote The New York Times.

In the same article, chic French smoked cigarettes while expressing horror at the American concept of the snack and the self-service. With cultural differences like that, is it any wonder that Shape France will be no longer?

The Post is aghast that the Nordic royal would even think of leaving the comfortable boredom of her Upper East Side digs for the mean streets of dodgy East Village. Despite the shock locals confirm that the two were "canoodling."

And the PDA is not limited to downtown!

A Spanish tourist armed with a cellphone took a video of the lovebirds at the Central Park Boathouse that has become an Internet sensation in the Nordic nation. Madeleine, the height of style in a white fur vest, is seen affectionately rubbing O'Neill's arm.

OK, yes, we know there's nothing truly gritty about quaint and dressed-up East Village, but we're still going to entertain this as a potential trend. Kate and Wills will be moving into Alphabet City in no time.

Click for Scandal Report: Everything Will Be OK, Taylor Swift >>

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

• When people say they're mad at all the banks for not lending to businesses and getting the economy going again, you can tell them they're crazy, because commercial and industrial lending rose by a whopping 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter. [WSJ]
• Aggressive cost-cutting by the airline industry worked out okay until a blizzard hit and carriers were reduced to helpless bleating over Twitter. [Bloomberg]
• The observation that Europe is facing a huge debt crisis has done little to make European policymakers reevaluate their decisions. [NYT]
• Allstate, the insurer, is suing credit-crisis posterchild Countrywide Financial (now part of Bank of America) and former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo over some allegedly destruct-o-matic mortgage-backed securities. [AP]
• Private equity titan BlackRock plans to make a "world-class trading platform" that will be the envy of all other trading platforms throughout the land, according to a leaked memo. [FT]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

• Even though their salaries have risen substantially in recent years, it would still hurt Wall Street employees' feelings if they didn't get any bonuses this year. [NYT]
• The accountants at Ernst & Young are in trouble with the state of New York for allegedly twiddling their thumbs and whistling to themselves as their client Lehman Brothers lied to investors about the security of its balance sheet. [WSJ]
• Europe is still in a world of hurt. Following Moody's Dec. 15 announcement that it may cut Spain's credit rating, Standard & Poor's is looking at downgrading Portugal, Ireland and Greece. Even France -- France! -- is vulnerable. Quel horreur. [Bloomberg]
• Kohlberg Kravis Roberts wanted to buy Australian money runner Perpetual for $1.75 billion, but could not get a deal done. [FT]
• Online holiday spending is up 12 percent this year. There are also some new names for online shipping days, like "Green Monday" and "Free Shipping Day." [Reuters]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

According to Bloomberg, "Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. were among the biggest borrowers from one program, the Term Auction Facility, with as much as $45 billion apiece." Not bad, but from the same item we also learn of programs that saved Bear Stearns and AIG from the brink of collapse and $16 billion worth of support for General Electric, the diversified symbol of American capitalism.

So American institutions pulled down a fair amount of funding from the Fed. But what might really chap the lips of U.S. citizens is the degree to which U.S. segments of European firms also dipped into Ben Bernanke's pockets:

Six European banks were among the top 11 companies that sold the most debt overall to the the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. They sold a combined $274.1 billion, according to data made public today by the U.S. central bank. UBS sold $74.5 billion, the most among all borrowers. The largest U.S.-based user was insurer American International Group, selling $60.2 billion.

An alternative reaction: The fragility and interconnectedness of the financial system was greater than ever before, and the effects of the crisis metastasized all the quicker because of that fact.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

The normal ebb and flow of American politics requires this dance which includes one step back for every two steps forward. On climate, there are powerful forces arguing that we should not reduce greenhouse gas emissions unless China and India are also required to reduce emissions. This argument that the developing world must be treated the same way we are is simply an excuse for inaction by those who are not yet convinced that we have a climate crisis. The developing world will also need to make the transition to renewable energy, but should be expected to follow rather than lead developed nations in this transition.

There are also Europeans who think that the climate regime we establish must include mandatory targets enforceable by the United Nations. I understand the European perspective, and after a century of world wars it easy to see why Europe decided to form a real union and dial back their national sovereignty. However, the rest of the world is still a collection of sovereign nations and I promise you that is not going to end any time soon.

The United States, by virtue of its military dominance, and the government of China, by virtue of its increasing economic and military might, are not about to cede authority to the United Nations- or anyone else. This means that climate policy must be based on the self interest of these still very sovereign states.  Our goal should be to imitate the imperfect international regime that seeks to control nuclear weapons.  That regime is firmly based on national self interest.  No nation is going to unilaterally disarm just as no nation is going to unilaterally dismantle their economy to stop emitting greenhouse gasses.  As imperfect as the nuclear regime is, for the sixty plus years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no nation state has ever deployed a nuclear weapon.  No sane national leader would consider using these weapons. What does the control of nuclear weapons have to do with climate policy? It’s all about the definition of national self interest.

Reduction of greenhouse gasses may or may not be in the long-term interest of the U.S., China, or Europe, but the transition to a fossil fuel free economy is in everyone’s self interest. There is a broad consensus that preventing global warming and maintaining the viability of our planet’s ability to sustain life are important goals. Although it is hard to argue against these goals, most nation states still manage to act as if the planet doesn’t matter.  The key is to turn enlightened long-term self interest into short-term national interest and real-world public policy. While there is no danger of running out of fossil fuels in the short-term, in the long-term these finite resources will be depleted. Laws like the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which cap allowable emissions of greenhouse gasses, will gradually raise the price of fossil fuels and encourage energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy. A gradual, well managed transition to a green economy is in our national interest as well as in the world’s interest.

Why is a green economy in our national interest?  The national interest here is in not being left behind. The real goal, of critical importance to economic well being, is to ensure that we don’t fall behind other nations in the race to devote as little of our wealth as possible to energy. Waxman-Markey contributes to that goal. If other nations find a way to run their economies with lower cost energy, the United States will be less able to compete in the global economy.  Our goods and services will tend to cost more than those made in other nations. Public policy that pushes low cost renewable energy is in our national interest.

Opponents of the transition to a non-fossil fuel economy will do the same thing this time they did when the U.S. Senate rejected the Kyoto accords. They will argue that a cap on emissions is the functional equivalent of unilateral disarmament. That is why the comprehensive approach of Waxman Markey represents a breakthrough and a more effective policy direction. This time we have embedded climate regulation in energy policy.  Climate policy is not simply about preserving the planet; it is about preserving the competitiveness of our economy in the global marketplace.

This does not tell you why I am confident that a climate bill and a health bill will emerge from this Congress. While Congress can sometimes act irrationally, it focuses first and foremost on its own survival.  In this case I am counting on the self interest of the Democrats in control of Congress. In 2010, one third of the Senate and all of the House of Representatives must face the electorate. Mid-term elections typically result in reduced margins for the President’s party. The Democratic Party’s goal is to stay in charge as the new Congress forms in 2011.   To win, the Democrats need a successful President. They need to prevent their opponents from defining the terms of these debates, as conservatives did through the summer. For the Democrats to maintain control of the Congress they need to face the electorate with three accomplishments: 1. A growing economy; 2. The start of national health policy, and; 3. A climate and energy bill.

Niccolo Machiavelli once said that “it is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.” Similarly, self interest is a more reliable predictor of politics and policy than idealism is. By moderating the impact of boom and bust capitalism, government policy in the 20th century preserved entrepreneurship and the market economy into the 21st century. By pushing our economy toward a more efficient green energy economy, we will preserve our prosperity through the 21st century.  We will do this because survival and prosperity are in our self interest.

Naturally, it's a bunch of burly American I-bankers who made the biggest single-asset deal in European history.

Lehman Brothers has purchased Coeur Defense, a series of five buildings, from Goldman Sachs for 2.11 billion euros, or $2.8 billion U.S. dollars. It's a record for the overseas bunch.

Cushman & Wakefield, which also advised the biggest single-building sale ever in U.S. history at 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, advised Lehman Brothers in this deal.

Full release after the jump.

- John Koblin

Cushman & Wakefield
Dept. of Corporate Communications

For immediate release

* * *

CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD ACTS FOR LEHMAN BROTHERS ON EUROPE'S LARGEST SINGLE-ASSET DEAL - THE PURCHASE OF COEUR DEFENSE IN PARIS

PARIS - March 30, 2007 - Global real estate consultant Cushman & Wakefield has advised Lehman Brothers Real Estate and its French partner the private company Atemi on the largest single-asset deal in Europe, the purchase of the Coeur Defense office complex in Paris.

Earlier this year, Cushman & Wakefield arranged the US$1.8bn sale of 666 Fifth Avenue in New York from Tishman Speyer to Kushner Companies, which was the world's largest single-building sale.

Coeur Defense was sold by French real estate investment trust Unibail and Goldman Sachs' Whitehall Funds for €2.11bn, or US$2.8bn. The transaction reflects a gross yield of 4.8 percent.

The office complex is situated in the key business district of La Defense, to the west of the city. It was completed in 2001, and consists of two 160-metre buildings and three low-rise buildings totalling 182,000 sq m and offering 159,000 sq m of office space, making it the biggest scheme of its kind in Europe. Current tenants include AXA Investment Managers, Societe Generale, Credit Lyonnais, Microsoft, Cap Gemini and HSBC.

Anne Lemonnier, Executive Director of Lehman Brothers Real Estate, says: "Coeur Defense is a landmark building not just for Paris but for Europe. In addition, it is located in one of the most attractive office markets in Europe, La Defense."

Olivier Gerard, head of Cushman & Wakefield's Capital Markets Group in France, adds: "Offices remain by far the most sought-after asset class in the French market, accounting for nearly 75 percent of last year's total investment volume. This is largely due to the strong performance of the office rental market, with Paris recording its highest office take-up ever last year with the letting of 2.8 million square metres of office space - the highest in Europe."

According to Cushman & Wakefield, France's investment market recorded transactions valued at a total of €24.5bn last year, most of which were in the Paris market. The single largest group of investors in the French market by nationality are the French, with 48 percent market share, says Cushman & Wakefield, followed by U.S. investors, which last year accounted for 16 percent of investment volumes.

Some day someone should make a Schindler's List-like movie of the guy who helped bring us out. It was Jacob Henry Schiff (1847-1920). Schiff was a great Jewish hero, there should be statues to this guy. He was the head of Kuhn, Loeb, and rivaled J.P. Morgan, and Lord Rothschild, and Bleichroder, as the most powerful banker in the world.

I'm reading a great book, To Free a People (1982), by Gary Dean Best, a professor of history emeritus at University of Hawai'i. It's about the efforts by American Jewish leaders to stop the pogroms in Europe and to ease the situation of Jews there. It's about the birth of the Jewish lobby. "In the quarter century between 1890 and 1914 the American Jewish leaders forged the foundation for a strong American Jewish lobby which significantly influenced American foreign policy toward eastern Europe...and served as the basis for the powerful present-day American Jewish lobby," Best writes.

The lobby then comprised Schiff and a few other bankers, who gained access to the president whenever they wanted it, and also Simon Wolf, of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. These bankers were warned early on that it was better to operate "diplomatically," i.e. behind closed doors, than for Jews to have mass meetings—rallies, which would piss off the Russians and Roumanians who were persecuting my ancestors. So that's what they did generally, they had private meetings. (Though rallies would play a role over the years.)

Best shows that while American Jews were able to influence American policy, American statements, they were only moderately successful in actually influencing Russia. Though, yes, they kept up the flow of emigration. At one point, Simon Wolf made the following boast, to a Russian diplomat:

This was not an idle boast. Best says that in the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-05, Schiff played a powerful role in defeating the Russian forces by acting to block their access to capital in Europe and America, and meantime floating bond after bond, into the hundreds of millions, for the Japanese.

All because of Russian persecution of Jews. I love this guy.

Obviously I am bringing this up to talk about the present day. Schiff waffled on Zionism, as so many German Jews did. Ultimately he helped out. Today the Israel lobby is devoted not to stopping the persecution of the Jews but to the militarization of the Jewish state and defense of the occupation. Toughdove and other Peace Now Jews are against that lobby, and good for them. They know better than I do the horrors of the occupation, and are trying to end it. Where we differ is that I think the Israel lobby has profoundly influenced American foreign policy, and hurt it. They say that's preposterous, Jews don't have that kind of power. Gary Dean Best, a scholar, says that we do.

Antisemites have scorched the earth for any intellectual discussion of this—that is the belief of the toughdoves. I take their point. I don't want more Jewish persecution to emerge from what Albert Lindemann, another fine scholar, calls the "rise of the Jews." But I'm betting that we can have that conversation in America without persecution, and we need to. Undeceiving ourselves about our rise, undeceiving ourselves about our influence on policy seem to me essential elements of an essential conversation: Why Are We In Iraq?

Norman Mailer’s first novel in over 10 years has a couple of big surprises right off the bat. One is physical, the other spiritual. As to the first, the welterweight from Brooklyn turns 84 at the end of the month; you lift the cover wondering how many rounds he can still go with a pencil. Forget about it. This work has vigor, excitement, humor and vastness of spirit. There are a few signs of strain, but they hardly count against the power of the language and the ideas. Here’s Norman Mailer in Act V, and he has all the wit and magic of old Prospero.

That touches on the second surprise: The novel’s concerns are metaphysical. Going in, you know the book is a biography of Hitler. I imagined I was in for a Leni Riefenstahl–ian barnburner that would take me through the Reichstag fire, Kristallnacht, the bunker. Waiting for the book to come, I peeked at a bio of Eva Braun. I was all wrong: There’s little history here at all, and more about czarist Russia in the late 1800’s than about Hitler as a fascist leader.

Any thought you have that the book will take up Jews and the Jewish question—again, no.

Mr. Mailer finishes with Hitler in 1905, at age 16 or so, in Linz, Austria, at about the time when he’s figured out how to masturbate. The author has thus eschewed Vienna and Berlin’s journalists and courtiers, types he knows well, for gothic settings. His pages are filled with incest, beekeeping, horses, squalling infants and feces, lots of it! The dogs aren’t Tolstoyan hounds, they’re snarling curs. Darkness hovers over every page. Sixty miles away, Theodor Herzl has just called for all Jews to leave Europe and form a state in Argentina or Palestine—Mr. Mailer doesn’t care. He’s using his simple materials to get at fundamental issues: the struggle between good and evil in our lives.

“The world has an impoverished understanding of Adolf Hitler’s personality …. He is, after all, the most mysterious human being of the century. Nonetheless, I would say that I can comprehend his psyche.”

The first-person narrator is a “high devil” who’s looking back on the days when he was molding Hitler so as to bring off the Holocaust. Lately demoted by Satan, he’s now betraying “the Maestro” by telling how devilish agency works (somewhat in the way that Hubbard betrayed the C.I.A. in Harlot’s Ghost). Mr. Mailer’s demonology aims to restore the devil to his proper place in a secular age. “The modern tendency is to believe that such speculation is a medieval nonsense happily extirpated centuries ago by the Enlightenment …. One Mystery [God] might be allowed, but two, never!”

Mr. Mailer’s metaphysics give the book its soul. God and the Maestro have been at war over us for a long time. God seeks to bring people to strength, generosity, loyalty, fairness. The Maestro’s goal is “reducing human possibilities” and wrecking civilization. Their methods are changing all the time. God was first to use dreams as “visions” to inspire us. But the devil has gotten into dreamwork, too: “jagged, broken-backed narratives” that reinforce our vices.

Neither God nor Satan can possess us fully, and both are strapped for time; they can’t attend all of us around the clock. That gives us a lot of leeway. (Mr. Mailer’s book tour ought to include some pulpits.) “[W]e do not appropriate people by way of a lightning flash …. Rather, it is an ongoing tug-of-war.” Meantime, we have learned to disguise the markings God gives to the depraved—an odor of sulfur and feces—with indoor plumbing and soaps.

Best-selling books tend to help the devil. Their authors call on the devil, and use magic and sentimentality “to steep their readers in baths of misperception. The profit comes to us.”

(It’s true: When you finish a great book, you want to call the author on the phone. I did, and asked Mailer if he was including his own work among books that serve the devil. No, he said, he was talking about the modern best-seller. (Mailer: “Those of use who set out to become novelists when I was young were absolutely agog with the fact that novelists were major historical figures. Steinbeck, Hemingway …. Young writers can’t feel that way anymore.” Publishers once used profits from best-sellers to nurture talents that might take a place in history; now they are “major marketing combines.”)

The great misperceptions that will bedevil Europe in this tale are patriotism and racialism. But these bad ideas are not as interesting to Mr. Mailer—or to the devil—as the future Fuhrer’s genetics. Hitler must be the product of incest. The devils encourage Hitler’s father, Alois, to have sex first with his own stepsister, then with their progeny, Klara, in twists and turns that have the mood of a “maimed French farce,” to cite Ron Rosenbaum (whose book, Explaining Hitler, is in Mr. Mailer’s long bibliography at the end).

Sweet Klara loves baby Adolf. Wiping his behind is a “dalliance.” “She wiped him so carefully that his eyes gleamed. He discovered heaven.”

So much mother-love can hobble a child’s will. The devils make sure that Adolf doesn’t get too much, by “drenching the boy’s spirit with wretchedness.” His abusive father, the retired customs agent, blows smoke in Adolf’s face, then laughs as the baby cries.

(The relationship of father and son animates the book; I wondered if Mr. Mailer was drawing on his own experience. Mailer: “No. My father was essentially a gentle man, though he was complex …. He was a compulsive gambler. He was remote, but not a brute, no, no, no. If you look at my books, there’s almost always a father-son relationship I explore.”)

The boy develops in evil ways that the devil prepares for him. He sharpens his oratory by talking to trees. He studies racialist science—and gassing—with a wizardly beekeeper who belongs firmly to the devil. He practices war games at school and masturbates to nationalist fantasies. The devil shields him from his own wretchedness by pumping up his idea of his own worth. “A mediocre mind, once devoted entirely to one mystical idea, can obtain a mental confidence well beyond its normal potential.”

Arc is the only problem here. The book ends at age 16 because the devil’s work is done: Hitler’s character is formed. The rest is history, and we know that history. Besides, Hitler’s adult actions beggar the imagination, even Norman Mailer’s imagination. Better to stick with the childhood, about which few know anything. The literary problem is that some of Hitler’s boyhood in The Castle in the Forest has the quality of a case study.

But plot has never been the reason to read Mailer. Better to read him for his ideas and insights. Here, for instance, is his take on marriage:

“[M]ost husbands and wives use so much of their time together in excrementitious exchanges. Indeed, that is often why they married in the first place …. They needed to be able to exercise one or another petty cruelty at any moment to a dependable person who would be close at hand …. The fierce upbraidings one would have liked to present to the world (but did not dare) could now be delivered through critical judgments on one’s mate. All that spiritual excrement! … Ergo, marriage is a workable institution—especially for dreadful people.”

I READ THIS BLACKLY HILARIOUS, BEAUTIFULLY written book in a few sittings. But does it live up to its own moral standards? Does it inform us about history, or steep us in baths of misperception? Can its metaphysics help us?

(Weiss: “I say this is a moral work.” Mailer: “A serious writer is always offering a moral. Even the writer who can be a perfect scamp, and people laugh, laugh, laugh—there is a moral under that.

“Theology and law are highly circumscribed. In politics, morality is also circumscribed, and often skewed.

“But as a novelist, you can be a private moralist and explore at some lengths. Saying I’m a moral novelist? That implies a piety and self-righteousness I don’t want to be attached to. I like to say that if a novel is successful, it can change the nature of people’s thinking.”)

As to history, the answer is a qualified yes. Mr. Mailer seems a little bored by history—been there, done that. He’s not interested in the Jewish question. His Hitler is a figure born of 19th-century ideas of racial difference and mass hysteria that are pan-European, and not limited to anti-Semitism. After the Holocaust, his devil says (in a plague-on-both-their-houses spirit), the demons moved on to the Arab world and to Israel.

(I asked about his Jewishness. Mailer: “There are two kinds of ways for novelists who have some talent to go. One is to use their experience as their private goldmine, and they search more and more deeply into that goldmine. That is one way to be a serious novelist. Another way was to use your personal experience as a springboard to go quite a distance into the outside world. That was my preference. My Jewishness was a great asset in my work, because it gave me a certain sensitivity to the world. It is not easy to be a Jew without thinking about the world a great deal of the time, given the classic situation of Jews in history …. But I have never wanted to write about the near things. My personal experiences are crystals to beam my imagination into far-off places.”)

The philosophical question is easier: Mr. Mailer’s metaphysics might actually change the way you think. With one blue eye on his own grandchildren, to whom the book is dedicated, another on one of the greatest evils of history, Mr. Mailer is offering us every bit of wisdom he has in his cosmology, and his manner is so open and generous that I find that I am willing to accept instruction. God and the devil are with us at every moment. Denial and repression may make us feel pious, but we’re still going to do bad stuff. The growing of ourselves involves screwing up a lot and trying to make wiser choices.

Mr. Mailer would seem to condemn himself into the bargain. The open question in this book is not what will become of Hitler (we know that story), but what will become of our narrator, and by the end he is showing real misgivings. “I have never known Love …. I can delineate most of the reasons for its presence or disappearance, I can inspire jealousy, doubt, even periods of revulsion toward the beloved …. I cannot distinguish true Love from its artistic substitutes.”

And telling true love from its counterfeit is everything in life.

These ideas give the book a kabbalistic feel: Demonology is an ancient kabbalistic pursuit, one that goes back to the Middle Ages. The Faust myth was imagined by kabbalists in the 1400’s—centuries before Goethe and Mann. (Mailer: “Trace out for me, if you will, that demonology—I’m interested.”)

Here my knowledge comes from Rabbi Asher Crispe, a scholar with the Gal Einai Institute, who lectured on demonology at Chabad-Lubavitch of the Main Line in Philadelphia last summer. Rabbi Crispe says kabbalists believe that after the snake entered the garden, the quality of doubt separated Adam and Eve for 130 years. In that time, Adam had 300 nocturnal emissions. (Mailer: “Three hundred emissions in 130 years—kind of a stingy dick!”)

Those emissions formed demons in the lower atmosphere that the kabbalists say can appear to us as animals, men or angels. They trap us at night, when we are asleep and our souls “disengage from our bodies” and seek divinity in our dreams to reorder our lives. Rabbi Crispe says wise mystics also seek their “brainchildren” in the heavens; the great test is sorting out the fake inspirations from the real deal. Mr. Mailer’s narrator engages us in the same trials.

(Mailer, chuckling: “I didn’t realize you had to be a kabbalist to believe that. You know, I was interested in the kabbalah, but I found it very difficult. Most of the writing repelled me. It was closed. I found it tiresome, not open. I felt there was a certain tyranny in the closure that surrounds it, and I didn’t like that …. The idea of a marketplace of sleep, I’ve used often. The idea that in sleep we occupy a more serious realm, that dreams are an essential apparatus. You don’t have to be a kabbalist to believe that. Christians believe that, Mohammedans.”)

Norman Mailer has always been a universalist; rejecting the idea of any tradition being chosen, he has taken freely from any tradition that interests him and shared his gifts fully in return. Here he shares the Holocaust with all humanity. It isn’t only a Jewish experience of history, it’s a spectacular victory of the devil over a weakening God, achieved with the help of a very bad boy. Now Satan has decamped to America. For mystical, metaphysical, misanthropic Mailer, there’s plenty of mud, feces and sulfur here, too.

(Weiss: “Are the two references in the book to America hints about George W. Bush?” Mailer: “Yes.”)

Philip Weiss writes the Observer.com blog MondoWeiss.

Will this press conference have an Italian flavor? Or will last-minute rumors about Vornado buying Cushman pan out?

UPDATE: The IFIL Group, controlled by the the Agnelli family, will buy a 67.5 percent stake of Cushman & Wakefield for $563 million. The release after the jump and details to follow.

- Tom Acitelli & John Koblin

NEWS RELEASE
DEC. 19, 2006

DISTRIBUTED ON BEHALF OF:
CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD, THE ROCKEFELLER GROUP AND IFIL

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

IFIL INVESTS $563 MILLION TO ACQUIRE 67.5% STAKE IN CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD, THE WORLD'S LARGEST PRIVATELY-OWNED REAL ESTATE SERVICES GROUP

* Investment to be financed primarily with IFIL's existing cash

* The agreement provides Cushman & Wakefield with the financial flexibility to support its growth strategy

* Cushman & Wakefield will be led by current CEO Bruce Mosler and the existing management team

* Cushman & Wakefield management and employees will retain up to 32.5% of the company's equity

* Investment implies an enterprise value for Cushman & Wakefield of $975 million

New York, 19 December 2006. IFIL Group ("IFIL"), the investment group of the Agnelli family, has signed an agreement pursuant to which it will acquire a 67.5% stake in Cushman & Wakefield for a total cash consideration of $563 million (EUR430 million). Following the transaction IFIL will replace Rockefeller Group International, Inc. ("The Rockefeller Group"), the global property development and investment firm, as controlling shareholder of Cushman & Wakefield. The transaction implies an enterprise value for Cushman & Wakefield of $975 million (EUR744 million), and values the equity capital of the world's largest private real estate services company at $834 million (EUR637 million), after transaction costs. IFIL may acquire as much as a further 8.1% of the equity capital from Cushman & Wakefield management and employees who will retain up to 32.5% of the company's equity at the close of the transaction.

The acquisition will be primarily financed with IFIL's existing cash resources with no additional leverage assumed by Cushman & Wakefield at the time of the transaction, ensuring that it retains complete financial flexibility with respect to its future growth objectives. For IFIL, the investment represents a unique opportunity to acquire a majority position in what is widely regarded as the commercial real estate sector's foremost brand. Cushman & Wakefield is led by one of the sector's most experienced management teams and operates in a growing, fragmented and consolidating services sector that presents excellent prospects for growth, both organically and through acquisitions. This transaction represents an important step in IFIL's plans to continue diversifying its assets across a range of sectors, geographies and currencies.

The investment provides Cushman & Wakefield with a new long-term shareholder with a proven track record of supporting management teams of its portfolio companies as they define and implement successful growth and development plans. The transaction provides Cushman & Wakefield with continuity of both management and strategy. In particular, its Fast Forward strategy is focused on extending Cushman & Wakefield's business in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region with the aim of generating 50% of its revenues from outside the United States by 2011, and on increasing its presence in the investment services sector.

Following the transaction, the Cushman & Wakefield Board of Directors will consist of Carlo Sant'Albano, Alessandro Potesta, Michael Bartolotta and Pierre Martinet from IFIL and Bruce Mosler, John Cushman and John Santora from Cushman & Wakefield.

The transaction requires regulatory approval and is expected to close around the end of January.

Announcing the investment, IFIL Vice Chairman John Elkann said:

"We're delighted to be able to announce this partnership with Bruce Mosler and his team. Under his leadership, Cushman & Wakefield has successfully developed its business and brand and we're excited at the prospect of partnering with this team for the company's next growth phase. As a leader in a growing, global services sector, Cushman & Wakefield is precisely the kind of company we've been looking for as we continue diversifying our investments."

Commenting on the investment, Bruce Mosler, Chief Executive Officer of Cushman & Wakefield, said:

"Securing IFIL as our partner puts Cushman & Wakefield in a position to take advantage of a consolidating industry to push forward with our strategic growth plan. Our partnership with The Rockefeller Group has been instrumental in supporting our growth in recent years throughout North America, Europe and Asia. With the IFIL team, we found an immediate meeting of the minds and a shared vision for the future. IFIL's knowledge of the regions and business areas we are targeting, its experience in the sector we serve and a transaction structure that assures Cushman & Wakefield of strong financial flexibility will put us in an even more powerful position to accelerate our plan for growth."

Jonathan D. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Rockefeller Group, added:

"After 30 years we are pleased and proud to entrust the Cushman & Wakefield brand to IFIL, as the Rockefeller Group focuses on its strategy to expand its real estate development and investment management businesses. IFIL is the perfect partner to support Cushman & Wakefield in the company's quest to fulfill its potential as one of the greatest real estate services companies in the world. Having worked closely with the management team leading Cushman & Wakefield, I am confident that this partnership with IFIL will herald the beginning of an era of even greater success for Cushman & Wakefield."

ABOUT CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD

Cushman & Wakefield is the world's pre-eminent privately held property services firm. It is present in 55 countries across the globe with 197 offices and 11,500 employees. In 2005 the company reported a 21% increase in revenues to $1.23 billion (EUR939 million) on a US GAAP basis and expects revenues for 2006 to be more than $1.4 billion (EUR1.1 billion), with an estimated EBITDA for the year of approximately $110 million (EUR84 million). The company is headquartered in New York, where it was founded in 1917.

Cushman & Wakefield provides real estate services to 75% of the Fortune 500 and has a diverse customer base. Cushman & Wakefield offers a complete range of services for the real estate sector, split into four main areas of activity: Transaction Services, including tenant and landlord representation in office, industrial and retail real estate; Capital Markets, including property sales, investment management of properties, investment banking and valuation services; Client Solutions, including integrated real estate strategies and related services to large corporations and property owners, and Consulting Services, including business and real estate consulting.

Last year, Cushman & Wakefield negotiated $69 billion in commercial property leasing, sale or financing transactions and has valued more property than any firm in the world. The firm has 430 million square feet of property under management, making it one of the largest global property managers. In 2005, Cushman & Wakefield launched its Fast Forward growth strategy to restructure its business, diversify its services and expand its geographic reach.

In the past two years Cushman & Wakefield has: consolidated its position in Mexico by taking full control of its operation there; acquired its Russian affiliate, Stiles & Riabokobylko, a leader in that market; acquired its Canadian affiliate, Royal LePage, the leader in the Canadian market; and announced plans to open an office in Finland. The company is also continuing to expand aggressively in India, China and throughout Asia. The US remains a core market and continues to present opportunities - the top five global real estate service providers, including Cushman & Wakefield, control only 14% of the $23 billion US commercial property services market affording plenty of scope for growth.

Cushman & Wakefield was acquired by The Rockefeller Group in April of 1976. The Rockefeller Group has provided Cushman & Wakefield with the capital necessary for the firm to pursue successful expansions in North and South America, Europe and Asia, and to recruit professional talent around the world.

ABOUT IFIL

IFIL S.p.A is the investment company of the Agnellis, one of Europe's leading entrepreneurial families, and is listed on the Italian stock exchange. IFIL actively manages a portfolio of assets operating across a range of sectors - including Automotive and Agricultural Equipment (Fiat Group), Financial Services (Gruppo Sanpaolo IMI and Gruppo Banca Leonardo), Business Services (SGS), Paper (Sequana Capital) and Leisure and Entertainment (Juventus, Alpitour and Turismo&Immobiliare) - and has more recently specifically targeted financial and real estate services as areas of potential growth, aiming at the same time to increase the geographic diversity of its assets particularly with regards to the US and Asia.

IFIL is one of the major investment companies in Europe with a portfolio currently worth about EUR8.9 billion ($11.7 billion). Some 32% of the company's capital is in free float with the balance held by the Agnelli family entities. In 2005 IFIL reported a consolidated profit on an IFRS basis of EUR1.09 billion ($1.43 billion).

ABOUT ROCKEFELLER GROUP INTERNATIONAL

For more than seventy years, Rockefeller Group International, Inc. (RGI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Estate Company Ltd., has been involved in some of the most significant real estate endeavors in the history of American real estate. Its roots can be traced to the development of Rockefeller Center, the world's finest urban business and entertainment complex. Today, The Rockefeller Group is known internationally as a real estate developer, investment manager and provider of real estate services. Its current subsidiaries are Rockefeller Group Development Corporation; CommonWealth Partners; Rockefeller Group Technology Solutions; and Rockefeller Group Business Centers.