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I am here to weigh in on the increasingly popular marketing battle over GGP’s (General Growth Properties) (GGWPQ.PK) value in and out of bankruptcy. The players in question are large buyside institutions who own opposing positions on the stock. Ackman/Pershing square, who are long the company’s stock, and Hovde Capital Advisors, who are short the stock, and Reggie Middleton, the original player.

For those who follow me regularly and are familiar with my dealings with GGP, skip down to the bottom of this post to download my latest GGP analysis. For those who are not familiar with me and the BoomBustBlog, I am (to the extent of my knowledge) the first investor/media concern to go public with a short thesis on General Growth Properties with a warning on commercial property in general, and a specific short on GGP in the 4^th quarter of 2007 (see "GGP and the type of investigative analysis you will not get from your brokerage house", BoomBustBlog professional subscribers can download the entire GGP composite history in .pdf format). I am a private investor that generates his own proprietary research. It is solid, independent, unbiased, and of extreme quality when compared to the highly conflicted sell side marketing fluff proffered as research, and apparently now stands out among the buy side as well. With all due respect to the successful investors referred to herein, there is a hint of "talking one’s book" within the presentations. I have absolutely no problem with self promotion, but when it appears the promotion comes at the expense of the validity of the analysis, it does tend to raise my brow, and apparently the brow of several institutions that have come to me for my opinion.

So, let’s take an unbiased, empirical look at GGP from the guy who first pointed out the insolvency of this company in the first place. As for the self promotion aspect, I am now offering consulting services to those who desire independent, objective analysis. I will soon be releasing a very interesting study on real estate funds and residential mortgage related products from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which will assuredly cause their clients to fall in love with them. More on that later, though.