SL Green Realty Corp. (NYSE: SLG) is a real estate investment trust, or REIT, that owns and leases office space to corporations in Manhattan. The company owns more than 30 New York City office properties totaling over 22 million square feet.^[1] In 2007, SL Green cemented its position as the Big Apple's largest landlord when it acquired Reckson Associates Realty Corp. The transaction added a total of 9 million square feet to its portfolio, including over 5 million square feet of suburban offices and 4 million additional square feet of prime Manhattan office space.^[2]

Over the past few years, SL Green has benefited from Manhattan's low vacancy rates, increasing rents and rapidly increasing commercial property prices, particularly in the red-hot midtown market. These were primarily the effects of a strong New York City economy and cheap, widely available debt. However, in the summer of 2007, financial institutions began suffering significant losses due to the subprime crisis. This crisis poses a double threat to SL Green. First, by weakening the financial sector, the heart of the New York economy, it threatens to crimp demand for office space in the company's core market. Second, as financial institutions have reigned in risk and tightened lending practices, credit has become more difficult to access which may hamper SL Green's ability to fund its own acquisitions and may hurt the overall value of its portfolio by limiting demand.

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