the hotel was missing basic financial records and found the hotel was using procedures that violated generally accepted accounting principles. Amid a real estate slump in 1990, the Trump Organization approached a financial crisis and was believed to be on the brink of collapse, with Donald Trump and his companies owing 72 banks a total of $4 billion, of which Trump personally guaranteed $800 million. Trump hired Stephen Bollenbach as the company's first chief financial officer, while Allen Weisselberg continued to serve under him as controller. Trump spent the following years renegotiating his debts, and gave up some properties, including the Trump Shuttle airline and a stake in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Bollenbach left the company in 1992. In 1995, Trump took another major step towards financial stability, launching a publicly traded company for the Trump casinos, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. By 1996, Trump was widely considered to be making a comeback. The casino company did not fare as well, however, and Trump eventually lost his stake in the company to bankruptcy. In 1997, Fred Trump transferred ownership of the bulk of his portfolio of apartment buildings to his four surviving children (Donald, Robert, Maryanne, and Elizabeth), submitting tax returns claiming the properties were worth $41.4 million. Fred died in 1999. In 2004, the four siblings sold the apartments for $737.9 million to a group led by Rubie Schron, marking the family's exit from ownership of their father's business. Financing During the property boom of the 1980s, Trump acquired numerous properties and by 1990 owed $4 billion to 72 banks. When the market entered a slump in 1990 that placed the organization at risk of collapse, Trump and his lenders acted to restructure his debts, although they disagree on who identified the problem and initiated negotiations. The resulting restructuring required his banks to forgive some of Trump's debt. Trump's casinos later entered bankruptcies in which his bondholders took deep losses. After these incidents, Trump had difficulty borrowing new money from most mainstream financial institutions. Deutsche Bank, which did not have a significant presence on Wall Street during the 1980s, expanded rapidly in the U.S. during the 1990s. Trump obtained a loan of approximately $425 million from them in 1998. In the process of its rapid expansion, the bank engaged in numerous questionable practices, including manipulating currencies and interest rates, laundering billions of dollars for Russian oligarchs and misleading