The State of Michigan began borrowing money from the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund Account for its unemployed workforce in 2006, earlier than any other state in the nation. For the first few years Michigan was able to keep up with the loan payments, but when the economic recession hit, its repayments and interest increased too quickly for the state to pay them.

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Using a master trust structure for real estate transactions pioneered by Kutak Rock LLP in 2005, a team of Denver attorneys recently acted as issuer’s counsel to STORE Capital Corporation, a private REIT, in connection with the issuance by its subsidiary, STORE Master Funding I LLC, of $229.5 million net lease mortgage notes. The STORE subsidiary is a bankruptcy remote, special purpose financing entity. The notes were rated A (sf) and BBB (sf) by Standard & Poor’s and purchased by institutional investors. The collateral for these notes consisted of 132 commercial real estate properties across various industry sectors, including related rents due under triple-net leases with the properties’ tenants. The master trust structure permits additional collateral to be added to the pool at a later date and also the issuance of additional notes in the future secured by the larger collateral pool.

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