Talk:Olympia and York

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Not clear.

It is not clear how far the 20 billion have been paid by the new company.

Why would it be paid by the new company? It was most likely wiped out when the old O&Y went bankrupt.

An honest man would pay off the debt any way, regardless of the law in England or any where else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.11.103 (talk) 15:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

That is very simplistic. Bankruptcy--a privilege found in almost every legal system--is founded on the premise that the good of society as a whole is served by extending the privilege to be forgiven one's debts in return for either liquidation (in the case when reorganization of the company's finances is not possible) or reorganization (which benefits society by preserving many jobs, and preserving the output of goods or services that the company produces to the nation at large. It was the legislators' clear decision that the forgiveness of debts is a fair and desirable exchange for the resulting consequences. Whatever you mean by an "honest man" is not completely clear, but one definition of honesty is abiding by the accepted laws and, I believe, is clearly satisfied in this case. The banks, corporations, and other investors who were lending large sums of money to O & Y did their homework, hired their high-priced legal and financial advisers, and decided to invest their funds in O&Y after their analysis of risk and benefits. They knew what they were doing. If their investments did not succeed, they are not entitled to recover from either the "person" if a sole propietorship, or from a corporation (as in this case). "Honesty" does not require "repaying" loans or invested capital in cases such as this. The entire economic system of capital markets would be jeopardized, or at least transformed into a fundamentally different enterprise. The amount of risk is always taken into account when negotiating the terms of a loan or investment. 66.108.4.183 (talk) 04:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC) Allen Roth

This is real simple. In order for O&Y to hold onto the small number of properties they have retained, through bankruptcy they would have sold the other interests as part of the liquidation, retaining whatever properties they could still afford or they are still continuing a payment scheme on the remaining part of their earlier debt. The article does not say when the bankruptcy went into permanent effect, if it did. Corporate bankruptcy in the U.S. is usually as a 1st step, a protection of assets, proceeding with a final discharge of assets as the last resort. Most corporate bankruptcies do not end in a complete dissolution of assets. Keep in mind, O&Y, were the largest corporate landlords in NYC at the end of the 1980's, owning most of Wall Street and a large part of mid-town corporate officespace, so they had an enormous amount of resources... Stevenmitchell (talk) 03:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)