CHICAGO – Shares in General Growth Properties Inc. (NYSE: GGP), owner of Providence Place and about 200 other shopping malls nationwide, continue to fall despite what the company describes as its “stable, high-quality portfolio of real estate assets in good locations with significant barriers to entry.”

“The company continues to be current on all of its debt obligations and is continuing its full financial and strategic review with its advisors,” General Growth said today.

Occupancy at its properties reached a record 93.2 percent in the second quarter, as “comparable net operating income continued to increase, even in a challenging consumer sales environment,” the company noted last month. And for all of 2007, General Growth posted a profit of $287.95 million, or five times the year-ago $59.27 million. (READ MORE)

Yet the real estate investment trust (REIT) has seen its shares fall more than 92 percent over the past year and 85 percent over the past month – as of yesterday’s $4.50 per share close – amid takeover fears and worries about its roughly $27 billion in debt. At 12:06 p.m. today, GGP shares were down another 41 cents, or 9.1 percent, at $4.09.

The company already has taken several actions to stem the tide.

Last month, General Growth announced “a comprehensive evaluation of its alternatives, both financial and strategic, in an effort to align the market value of the company’s common stock more closely with the intrinsic value.”

Besides seeking financing to meet near-term obligations – beyond the $1.75 billion in additional mortgage funding it announced earlier last month – General Growth was developing “comprehensive, strategic plan to generate capital from a variety of potential sources,” the company said in a Sept. 22 statement. The sale of core and non-core assets, the sale of joint venture or preferred equity in pools of selected assets, “a corporate-level capital infusion” and possible “strategic business combinations” all were among the options being mulled.

More recently, the company announced a management shakeup: Edmund Hoyt will serve as interim chief financial officer, in place of former CFO Bernard Freibaum, “who is no longer employed by the company.” General Growth said last Friday. Hoyt has been with the company since 1986 – in “a variety of … financial planning, accounting and controllership roles” – and has been its senior vice president and chief accounting officer since 2000.

Meanwhile, “All continuing executive officers … have informed the company that they have repaid in full all previously existing margin loans and thus there will be no further sales of company stock by those executive officers to satisfy margin calls,” General Growth said. “In addition, the Bucksbaum family interests have informed the company that they have not sold any shares of company stock and that they do not intend to sell any of their shares.”

Freibaum told the company that on Oct. 2, “he sold approximately 2.95 million shares of common stock to satisfy margin calls and applied all of the proceeds to repay outstanding margin debts,” leaving him with about 1.3 million shares of GGP stock and about $3.4 million in margin debt, General Growth said last week in announcing his departure.

In addition, the company said, “given the uncertainty and volatility in the capital markets,” and given that “all distributions currently required to maintain REIT status have already been made this year,” its board of directors has agreed to suspend the payment of dividends on its common stock.

Yet, although GGP shares rose slightly Friday on the news, they have since resumed their decline.

General Growth Properties Inc. (NYSE: GGP) – owner of Providence Place, the Swansea Mall and the Silver City Galleria in Taunton – is one of the nation’s largest publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) based on market capitalization. GGP’s portfolio includes about 200 million square feet of retail space and more than 24,000 stores, as well as stakes in various master-planned community developments and commercial office buildings. Additional information is available at www.ggp.com.