ALBUQUERQUE -- In a deal valued at more than $15 million, San Diego-based Trigild Inc. -- in tandem with Dallas-based brokerage firm Annandale Real Estate -- has closed the sale of a portfolio of 30 Albuquerque area gas station/convenience stores once owned by PRP Inc. and operated by Ever-Ready Oil Inc.
Trigild, which specializes in loan recovery and management of commercial real estate assets and operating businesses, facilitated the sale with Annandale, who also worked with New Mexico-based Hopkins Real Estate.
According to Gary Aharonian, Trigildís vice president of petroleum properties, the stores were sold to two separate regional operators -- with one buyer acquiring two of the portfolio locations and the other purchasing the remaining 28 sites.
Located throughout Albuquerque and the surrounding communities, the former Chevron (NYSE: CX) and Conoco (NYSE: COP)-branded properties range in size from 900 to 2,400 square feet and are situated on half-acre to three-acre parcels.
Ever-Ready Oil was placed in receivership in May 2010.
School seizure
(AP) -- A private school in El Cerrito needs to raise nearly $1 million to avoid a bank seizure.
Officials at the K-8 Windrush School told the San Francisco Chronicle that all 165 students would have to find new schools by Oct. 28 if they can't come up with the money.
The school's financial woes stem from a $13 million bond it used to build a new middle school in anticipation of an influx of new students.
But the recession instead forced parents to pull their kids out of the school, which has an annual tuition of about $20,000 a year depending on the grade level.
Windrush can now no longer make payments on the bond.
Since it had put up the school property as collateral, that is now in danger.
Hovnanian bonds
(Bloomberg) -- Hovnanian Enterprises Inc.ís senior secured bonds are yielding 18.5 percent after the New Jersey homebuilder announced exchange offers for up to $220 million of securities.
The companyís $797 million of 10.625 percent notes due in October 2016 tumbled 4.4 cents to 75 cents on the dollar as of 10:31 a.m., Friday, in New York after a 5.3 cents drop Thursday, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The debt was yielding 15 percent on Sept. 27, the data show.
The Red Bank-based homebuilder is offering to exchange senior notes with coupons ranging from 6.25 percent to 11.875 percent and maturities from 2014 through 2017 for up to $220 million of new 2 percent senior secured bonds due 2021, according to a statement on Sept. 28.
Hovnanian (NYSE: HOV) said the offer will expire on Oct. 26 and that the early tender and consent time is at 5 p.m. in New York on Oct. 12.
Parish property
(AP) -- The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that a 135-year-old local parish that broke away from the Episcopal Church after it consecrated its first openly gay bishop cannot keep its building and land.
Justices ruled Friday against the Bishop Seabury Church in Groton, which like dozens of parishes nationwide split from the national Episcopal Church after the 2003 appointment of Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
Similar land disputes involving breakaway Episcopal parishes have been playing out in courts across the country.
The parish's lawyer argued that the Episcopal Church has no right to the property and the land deed is in the parish's name.
But the state diocese said church rules prohibit congregations from walking away with church properties, and those properties are held in trust for the denomination.
Ally in peril
(Bloomberg) -- Bond investors are turning against Ally Financial Inc., the auto and home lender majority-owned by the U.S. government, as mounting mortgage liabilities threaten its turnaround plan.
Allyís $2 billion of 8 percent notes due in November 2031 fell 2 cents to 88 cents on the dollar at 10:44 a.m., Friday, in New York, the lowest since May 2010 and down from 110 cents on the dollar on July 7, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Thatís more than twice the average loss for high-yield debt in that period, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show.
Even as Detroit-based Ally profits from lending to consumers, its mortgage unit faces lawsuits over faulty loans and a 50-state investigation into foreclosure practices.
“Ally is a mess,” said Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics in Torrance, Calif. While the bank is healthy, the mortgage unit “could pull the thing down.”
N.Z. approvals
(Bloomberg) -- New Zealand home building approvals surged to a 13-month high in August, signaling stronger economic growth.
Permits jumped 12.5 percent to 1,357 in August from July when they rose a revised 14.3 percent, Statistics New Zealand said Friday.
Excluding apartment permits, which are volatile, approvals surged 16.9 percent to also reach the highest since July 2010.
Building approvals accelerated after dropping to a two-year low in February, following the nationís deadliest earthquake in eight decades,
Approvals rose from the year-earlier period for the first time since August 2010, the statistics agency said.
Dam stopped
(AP) -- Myanmar's president called Friday for work on a controversial Chinese-backed hydroelectic dam to be halted and the concerns of its critics settled, in a startling turnaround welcomed by democracy activists and environmentalists.
President Thein Sein said in a statement read out on his behalf at Parliament that the $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project in the northern state of Kachin should be suspended because “it is against the will of the people.”
Thein Sein said all construction would be stopped for the duration of his term -- at least until 2015 -- in a striking reversal for the government.
Too much energy
(Bloomberg) -- The 15 mile-per-hour winds that buffeted northern Germany on July 24 caused the nationís 21,600 windmills to generate so much power that utilities such as EON AG (Pink: EONGY) and RWE AG had to pay consumers to take it off the grid.
Rather than an anomaly, the event marked the 31st hour this year when power companies lost money on their electricity in the intraday market because of a torrent of supply from wind and solar parks.
The phenomenon was unheard of five years ago.
With Europeís wind and solar farms set to triple by 2020, “you’re looking at a future where on a sunny day in Germany, you’ll have negative prices,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance chief solar analyst Jenny Chase.
