first heard back in university. I, and others, always thought we should use it in legal situations as opposed to 'An act of God'.
But before I get carried away, here's a nifty way to screw a bank. I actually think it's brilliant and a well deserved round of applause to Trump's lawyers........
It's one of Germany's biggest and now its most controversial financial institutions, Deutsche Bank.
Now Deutsche Bank is under investigation by US federal authorities for, among other things, its shady dealings with Russia even as the bank tries to restructure its massive loans to America's freshly minted president.
It was November 2008. Three-and-a-half years earlier the bank had loaned Trump the cash to build one of his grandest projects yet: a hotel and mega-tower in Chicago.
Trump had given his personal guarantee he would repay the $640m. As per agreement, he was now due to hand over a large chunk, $40m.
There was only one problem: the future 45th president of the United States was refusing to pay up. Deutsche initiated legal action. Trump responded with a blistering, scarcely credible writ of his own, a 10-count complaint in New York’s supreme court, in the county of Queens.
In it, Trump adopted a highly unusual defence, known as “force majeure”. He claimed that the 2008 economic crisis was a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami”, an act of God that was equivalent to an earthquake.
Since it couldn’t have been anticipated, and it wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t obliged to pay Deutsche anything. It wouldn’t get the $40m or the outstanding $330m, his writ said.
He went further. Trump claimed Deutsche Bank had actually helped cause the crunch. Therefore it owed him. Trump demanded $3bn from Deutsche in compensation.
Its New York property division first loaned money to him in 1998 at a time when the bank was attempting to expand its commercial real estate portfolio. By that stage, other major banks were becoming cautious about Trump, in part, the Wall Street Journal has said, because of frustration with his business practices.
A decade later, Deutsche was to find out for itself quite how capricious and unpredictable he could be.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/16/how-donald-trump-became-deutsche-bank-biggest-headache
But before I get carried away, here's a nifty way to screw a bank. I actually think it's brilliant and a well deserved round of applause to Trump's lawyers........
It's one of Germany's biggest and now its most controversial financial institutions, Deutsche Bank.
Now Deutsche Bank is under investigation by US federal authorities for, among other things, its shady dealings with Russia even as the bank tries to restructure its massive loans to America's freshly minted president.
It was November 2008. Three-and-a-half years earlier the bank had loaned Trump the cash to build one of his grandest projects yet: a hotel and mega-tower in Chicago.
Trump had given his personal guarantee he would repay the $640m. As per agreement, he was now due to hand over a large chunk, $40m.
There was only one problem: the future 45th president of the United States was refusing to pay up. Deutsche initiated legal action. Trump responded with a blistering, scarcely credible writ of his own, a 10-count complaint in New York’s supreme court, in the county of Queens.
In it, Trump adopted a highly unusual defence, known as “force majeure”. He claimed that the 2008 economic crisis was a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami”, an act of God that was equivalent to an earthquake.
Since it couldn’t have been anticipated, and it wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t obliged to pay Deutsche anything. It wouldn’t get the $40m or the outstanding $330m, his writ said.
He went further. Trump claimed Deutsche Bank had actually helped cause the crunch. Therefore it owed him. Trump demanded $3bn from Deutsche in compensation.
Its New York property division first loaned money to him in 1998 at a time when the bank was attempting to expand its commercial real estate portfolio. By that stage, other major banks were becoming cautious about Trump, in part, the Wall Street Journal has said, because of frustration with his business practices.
A decade later, Deutsche was to find out for itself quite how capricious and unpredictable he could be.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/16/how-donald-trump-became-deutsche-bank-biggest-headache
