The consortium would replace JLL, which checked out of the role last summer.

PIA, which answers to the Pakistani government, was recently reported by Saudi Arabia-based daily Arab News to be weighing proposals from seven potential groups to advise on the Roosevelt’s future and to facilitate any deal. The Morgan Stanley team would include CBRE, Manhattan’s most prolific commercial brokerage. 

The future of the precious Roosevelt Hotel site — which might be worth more than $1 billion —  is in limbo again. Robert Miller

Nothing about PIA’s plans could immediately be confirmed.

One source cautioned, “The Roosevelt owners have played with one scenario after another for at least 10 years and never did anything.”

A JLL team headed by the firm’s regional CEO Peter Riguardi resigned from the account last summer. A Pakistani government agency attributed JLL’s move to its wish to avoid any “perceived or actual conflict of interest,” as the firm represents several clients said to be interested in the site.

Since then, PIA has not announced a new financial adviser, a role that would include essentially brokering an outright sale of the site or a partial sale with a development partner. Arab News claimed that PIA would “fast-track” choosing a new adviser this month.

But one skeptical, prominent Manhattan investment-sales dealmaker said, “Who knows? It’s been a colossal waste of time, mostly because the property is tied to the government of Pakistan and their military leaders which turn over pretty consistently.”

While JLL’s departure was attributed to potential for “conflict of interest,” it isn’t uncommon for major Manhattan brokerages to work both sides of a deal.

“It often helps to make a sale or a lease easier,” an insider said. “They put up a so-called ‘Chinese wall’ between the two negotiating teams and it generally holds up.”

A JLL team headed by the firm’s regional CEO Peter Riguardi resigned from the account last summer. Erik Thomas/NY Post

Nor is it unheard of for brokers to rep developers hoping to build in the same areas. Moreover, JLL’s client list — which includes both leading developers and tenants — was no secret to either the brokerage or to PIA when the airline tapped JLL in February 2024.

Riguardi declined to comment. Emails to PIA seeking comment weren’t returned.

As previously reported in The Post, Pakistan’s government needs the dough from a Roosevelt sale to help support a $7 billion bailout arrangement with the International Monetary Fund.

The Roosevelt site between Madison and Vanderbilt avenues and between East 44th and East 45th streets is one of Manhattan’s most valuable pieces of land, situated in an East Midtown corridor where prestigious tenants have flocked to new office developments near Grand Central Terminal.

Migrants at the Roosevelt Hotel in 2023. James Messerschmidt for NY Post

The shuttered hotel lies amidst the new JP Morgan Chase headquarters tower at 270 Park Ave., a future Boston Properties (BXP) tower at 343 Madison Ave., and an unspecified SL Green development site on the former Brooks Brothers store at 346 Madison.

A new office tower at the Roosevelt site could have as much as 1.8 million square feet under Midtown zoning that allows large-size bonuses in exchange for significant pedestrian and transit improvements.

The 1,000-room Roosevelt Hotel has been vacant since the city in June terminated a contract with PIA to use it as a migrant shelter.

The 1,000-room Roosevelt Hotel has been vacant since the city in June terminated a contract with PIA to use it as a migrant shelter. Matthew McDermott

PIA has repeatedly changed its mind about what to do with the property since it took control in 2000. It was reported at different times that the airline would pursue an outright sale or seek a majority or minority development partner.

In the latest twist, Pakistan privatization official Muhammad Ali told Arab News earlier this month the building might not be demolished anytime soon, but would reopen as a hotel.

That suggestion drew laughs from Manhattan hotel experts who said reopening it  would take at least a year just to clean up the mess left behind by a year of migrant occupation.

“By that time, the markets for both offices and hotels might have changed,” one industry insider scoffed.

The post Exclusive | As NYC’s historic Roosevelt Hotel site sits in limbo, Morgan Stanley team poised to become new financial adviser: sources appeared first on Our Story Insight.

As someone inside the White House recently reminded me: “A lot of people on Wall Street don’t like Howard, but they’re acting like this is his tariff policy – not the president’s.”   

True, though in the past, I too have sounded the alarm on Lutnick’s role in Trump’s tariff war, specifically his ability (or inability) to promote the clear necessity to fix something that based on all the evidence continues to undermine the US interests. It would be nice to manufacture more stuff here as well. China has been screwing us for years.

Wall Street has been venting its outrage on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over the tariffs. Jack Forbes / NY Post Design

Yet selling it is key: The bond market, even more than stocks, keeps the country’s lights on and there are growing signs that the credit markets hate the administration’s uneven policies, and explanation of those policies. One day we have massive tariffs, the next day there is a pause. One day we have an exemption for tech companies, the next day we don’t.

Lutnick is out there bloviating about all of the above, making the situation worse, his critics contend. Among his many gems to defend Trump’s World War Tariff is that it will magically create lots of new factory jobs, or in Lutnick speak: An army “of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones — that kind of thing will come back to the America, it’s going to be automated, and great Americans, the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them.”

More From Charles Gasparino

Yes, not good.

That’s why behind the scenes, there’s a “Fire Lutnick” movement by Wall Street executives, lobbying key Trump aides to get him out of the tariff picture ASAP, get him reassigned to more mundane tasks like traveling the country visiting local chambers of commerce.

The movement picked up steam over the weekend after markets were prepared for a huge rebound at the Monday open. Major tech companies seemed to be excluded from tariffs, only to be told by Lutnick during the Sunday shows that wasn’t really the case. As one Wall Street executive put it after witnessing Lutnick latest on trade: “He’s a wrecking ball.”

President Trump and Lutnick unveiling the tariff policy on April 2. REUTERS

Your humble correspondent, meanwhile, has been bombarded with nasty Lutnick stories – like how his brokerage firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, is heavily invested in AI and would thus benefit from onshoring factories as they increasingly use robots and other modernized manufacturing.

To be sure, the Wall Street establishment never liked Lutnick, an upstart with sharp elbows and voluble nature. He ran a tough, eat-what-you kill brokerage firm, and was very good at it. Plus, I’m skeptical of all these hit pieces I keep getting. The AI story seems dubious because Cantor (where he remains a majority owner on leave to the White House), is pretty much a minor player in the AI race that involves every bank and institutional investor and tech company on the planet. 

Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet

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Most of all, the tariff policy isn’t Lutnick’s but Trump’s, who likes to negotiate either in business deals or with trading partners by keeping them guessing. True, Lutnick hasn’t been the best spokesman for the cause, and markets like that Trump’s erudite Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former currency trader, is now taking the lead.

Still, Bessent, after stripping down his more eloquent trade explanations, isn’t saying anything different than Lutnick, namely that we are in a tariff war with the rest of the world that the markets hate. The Treasury Secretary can spin Trump’s plans all he wants, but it won’t matter if the boss keeps throwing curveballs while the markets digest one of the most seismic economic policy shifts in decades.

In other words, cut Howard a break.

The post Howard Lutnick is the Trump adviser Wall Street loves to hate appeared first on Our Story Insight.