Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corp. are also not at the center of Mr. Trump’s money-making enterprise. They primarily perform back-office functions, hiring and paying executives, so they hold no loans, liquor licenses or other privileges that could disappear after a conviction.
That’s not to say the reputational damage to a conviction won’t do some damage. It could scare off potential lenders and business partners, or enable them to impose stricter terms on Mr. trump card. The price of being a felon can make it harder to retain employees and ultimately scale your company.
However, the Trump Organization was on the back foot long before its conviction.
Midway through the polarizing Trump presidency, it shelved plans for a new hotel brand and lost some of its signature hotels. Over the course of a year, Trump’s name was dropped from hotels in Panama, Toronto and lower Manhattan. Instead of tackling new projects, the company has opted to lean toward properties it has held for years, including office and apartment buildings in New York, a handful of hotels and 16 golf courses it owns or manages.
The Trump family – which has adopted several self-imposed moral restraints, including a moratorium on new foreign deals – blamed most of the layoffs on following the wave of political and legal scrutiny from the businessman president.
That was before the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office even started examining Mr. Trump began its own investigation into his business practices in 2018 or the New York attorney general’s office the following year.
Attorney General Letitia James struck first. In September, she sued the company along with her husband. Trump has accused it of overvaluing its assets by billions of dollars. Her lawsuit asks a judge to remove the Trump family from leading their family business; an independent monitor has been selected to ensure the company does not move any of its assets out of state.
With the company now being convicted, any plans for growth seem to be in flux.
During the trial, the Trump Organization announced a new deal with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a residential and golf complex to be built in Oman. But the deal appears to be a one-off rather than a sign of Mr. Trump is suddenly back in transactional mode.