Donald Trump is being sued for US$1.3 million by three real-estate brokers who say he has failed to pay them in full after the profitable sale of land and apartments he owned on the former West Side Manhattan rail yards.
The lawsuit centers on the billionaire developer's sale of 30.8 hectares of riverfront property and three buildings to the Extell Development Corp and Carlyle Group for US$1.8 billion. Parties to the October deal said it was the biggest residential sale in the city's history.
Barbara Corcoran, founder and principal of one of New York's major real-estate firms, and two of her brokers say in the lawsuit that they have a contract that set the terms of their compensation from the sale.
The contract, their court papers say, called for Trump to pay them US$4 million in commissions -- a US$2 million base commission for arranging the financing to develop the properties and a US$2 million percentage commission after the properties' sale.
The brokers' lawyer, Richard Seltzer, said that Trump had paid his clients -- Corcoran, Carrie Chiang and Susan Cara-Madden -- US$2.7 million, leaving US$1.3 million due.
Trump replied on Wednesday that he does not owe the brokers any money -- yet.
"The agreement is very clear," Trump said.
"I only pay them when I get paid. We haven't gotten the money yet. For her to bring a lawsuit against me is insane," he said.
Trump complained that Corcoran was ungrateful since he had given her "tens of millions of dollars in business over the years" and had done favors for her. He said he was through doing business with her.
Trump lawyer Jason Greenblatt said there is no date when the payment to the brokers comes due.
"When we get paid our distribution, they will get paid their share. They're asking for something they're not owed at this time," he said.
Seltzer, the brokers' lawyer, said Trump can say he doesn't have the money because he immediately reinvested it in real estate so he could avoid paying capital gains taxes. He said the sale of the property "triggered his obligation to pay the balance of the US$4 million."
The 30.8 hectare parcel stretches from 59th Street to 72nd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, along the Hudson River.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS