REal Talk with Adam Perrotta-Wednesday

A couple of troubled firms got some welcome news today. Industrial giant ProLogis netted some $200 million in financing, and Morgan Stanley upping its stake in debt-plagued General Growth Properties.

The General Growth deal might simply be a case of the retail REIT's stock having fallen so low--closing yesterday at just 94 cents--that Morgan couldn't resist getting in at the bargain basement. Besides, the bank only upped its ownership portion to just over 5 percent, and Morgan Stanley--despite its own financial troubles--is probably thinking it's large enough to absorb the risk. Although that's probably what a lot of firms thought about buying up those subprime mortgage securites a few years back...

Thus far, this week has been a rare (relatively) good one for General Growth; the firm had another lifeline tossed its way on Monday, when a consortium of lender banks gave the REIT a two-week extension on the maturity of some $900 million in loans on a pair of Las Vegas malls. But as I noted at the time, considering the $27 billion that General Growth currently owes, the firm clearly has a long way to go to put its problems behind it.