How Much Extra To Move Jobs?

That's the conundrum I have been faced with this morning, following another headhunter call. Of course, the salary levels they claim are usually best-case and designed to hook you into taking it further. This one dangled the prospect of an extra £50,000 increase in my base salary if I moved.

However after about 5mins deliberation, the answer is going to be 'no'. It is certainly tempting from one perspective, but one problem is that the bank in question is terrible: without naming names, one of those suffering from merger pains, combined with being incompetently run for years - hence is on government life support and has made huge losses.

Most of all though, there is more to this than just money. Let me just reassure you that there is no loyalty for the bank, or love for the 'unique team culture' - every bank spouts waffle about it being a giant family and that they are the best. Unfortunately the brutal culling of staff in the last year merely illustrated the fallacy to those corporate clones too stupid to see it before.

Working for yourself is the only place to aim for in life. So yes, an extra £50k now would be nice, but the cost is all of the hassle and risk of a new job. When I factor in work on my business ahead of the launch later this year, I realised what is much more important to me. At present I have got time to work on this almost daily, but that could easily change with a new boss on my shoulder, and needing to forge a reputation at a new place.

Anyway it's an interesting question, and highlights to me how my priorities have changed so significantly since I mentally made the jump towards my aspirations being out of the sector.

Although not yet announced, Pershing Square are about to submit a counter-offer on the DIP financing. It is unsurprising because without the innovative equity conversion option they had included as the DIP financier, they lose a valuable hedge against their significant existing holdings. This will be good news for GGP again, as any competition around terms of financing benefits the firm - I am just hoping to see the equity conversion option dropped, but matching the other loan terms with a lower interest rate is a more likely sweetener.

Otherwise Reuters reported last week that Simon Property Group have raised more capital in another significant stock offering. They cite the reason being for "general corporate purposes", but pointedly there is no longer a denial of interest in future acquisitions, just citing timing.

Due to the market saturation (in the US) of mall owners, all of the REIT's need to expand their market shares through acquisitions. As such, and despite denials, Westfield are also lining up to compete with Simon and Vornado (who have openly admitted interest) for any asset sales that GGP decide to put out there.

As with DIP financing, it is much better to have competition in a sale like this. On an unrelated rumour, the Court will reconvene tomorrow to review the DIP financing options and progress further. For now this is a side show to the bigger issue relating to creditors and the SPE inclusions discussed in my last post.