Trump: The Art of the Deal

by Donald J. Trump

first tried to get the covenant from Jay Pritzker at the time we made our deal, but he refused. Jay is a smart guy, and he wasn’t about to foreclose the future expansion of his hotel chain in one of the biggest cities in the world. We finally got to the closing, and just before we all sat down, I was alone with an executive from the bank. I pointed out that this was a rather big and risky investment the bank was making, and that one way to further protect the loan might be to insist on a restrictive covenant, so that Hyatt couldn’t throw up a second hotel two years later, right down the street. The banker saw the implications immediately. He stormed into the room where the Hyatt people were sitting, and he said, “Hey, fellas, we’re putting up tens of millions of dollars, which is a lot of money, and we’re not going to make this loan unless we get a covenant from Hyatt saying you won’t open up any other hotels in New York.”