For months now, real-estate developer Michael Shvo has been insisting that everything is just fine, despite troubling signs at his portfolio of trophy properties. During the pandemic, Shvo snapped up the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach, and the Coca-Cola building at 711 Fifth Avenue, a $3 billion spree made possible with the backing of German pension fund BVK, the country’s largest public pension group. It was a triumphant comeback for Shvo, who went from running a taxi fleet in the 1990s to becoming a hotshot broker before pivoting to developer in 2010s, only to be wiped out by a tax-evasion case over his art collection and Ferrari in 2018.
But a few years ago, Shvo’s new real-estate empire started to wobble: He defaulted on a $200 million loan for the Mandarin Oriental Residences in Beverly Hills that led to a sale under duress last winter, and in October, he was forced to sell the Raleigh Hotel after sales stalled out on the unfinished project (he tried to match the $270 million offer to stop the sale but ultimately relented). He’s also been locked in an ongoing lawsuit with the CORE Club over its space at 711 Fifth. Then, last week, Green Street Newsreported that not only was the Transamerica Pyramid selling, it was selling it at a loss: $700 million, some $300 million less than Shvo and his partners put into the building. The buyer of the tower is Yoda PLC, a Cyprus-based investment firm.
