Patrick Fitzgibbons

A few years ago, there was a book out called "Tuesdays with Morrie." At Reuters, though, we spend our Tuesday mornings during Auto Summits with Ron.

It wouldn't be a Reuters Autos Summit without our yearly visit from United Auto Workers head Ron Gettelfinger ... at the crack of dawn.

Gettelfinger is not one to loaf around and show up at our summit at a leisurely hour of, say, sometime after the sun rises. Oh no. Gettelfinger was scheduled to kick off our Tuesday slate of guests at 7:00 am. But by now we know better.

In fact, when coming into the building this morning sometime after 6:00 am, Gettelfinger was already in the lobby of the Detroit Chamber of Commerce building doing a radio call-in program on his cell phone.

The sun would rise shortly thereafter.

But despite the hour, Gettelfinger is always an interesting person to interview, as he has his eye on all parts of the autos industry. And he didn't disappoint this year, either.

After a year like this has been, there is a tendency to want to sit back a little and let all of the seismic events sink in. But Gettelfinger sees the real challenges to the autos industry to be down the road.

 (Click here to hear Ron Gettelfinger's comments)

New technologies, new hiring patterns and new financings will all be the order of the day for the next 10 years. So while this has been a rough-and-tumble year, the fun hasn't ended yet, he suspects.

The Reuters Autos Summit runs through Thursday in Detroit and Paris and features a global slate of guests from the big manufacturers, dealers and suppliers.

The U.S. auto industry has had one heck of a year.

Sales have fallen off, credit has been pretty much nonexistant and two of the major U.S. automakers were bankrupt. Other that all that, things were fine.

But Bill Diehl, chief executive of advisory firm BBK, said at the first day of this year's Reuters Autos Summit, that one of the main concerns for 2010 (if it's not THE main concern) is the industry's overall exposure to commercial real estate.

We have been hearing about the problems with commercial real estate in many other sectors of the U.S. economy and Diehl gave the strongest statement so far about the auto side.

(To hear Diehl\'s comments, please click here)

The Reuters Autos Summit continues through Thursday in Detroit and Paris.

A few years ago, one of the guests at our annual Reuters Autos Summit -- Tom Stallkamp from Ripplewood -- pretty much stopped everyone dead in their tracks by predicting that auto sales in the United States was likely to fall to an obscenely low level of 14.5 million.

Those were the days.

Of course, Stallkamp was making that prediction at a time when U.S. car manufacturers were selling in the neighborhood of 16 to 17 million a year. If the number hits 14.5 million in 2010, people will be wild with enthusiasm as most now expect something in a range of 10 to 11 million.

That would be about flat to a little higher than sales this year.

On the first day of Reuters annual sojourn to Detroit for the Reuters Autos Summit, defining what the "new normal" is going to be for everything about the auto industry is much on everyone's mind. What will happen with the big manufacturers, the dealerships, the suppliers.

It's a lot to assess all at once.

Bob Carter, head of Toyota's U.S. operations kicked things off for the summit by talking about what he sees for the coming year.

The Reuters Autos Summit runs through Thursday in Detroit and Paris. For an audio clip of Carter's comments, please click this link (Toyota's Bob Carter at the Reuters Autos Summit).

All week, we have been meeting real estate executives at Reuters Global Real Estate Summit who have discussed the many different areas of concern that have spread throughout the sector.

Some have spoken about deleveraging. Some have told us about the shrinking of values. Others have said it's a confidence game -- as in, there isn't any.

But J. Allen Smith, chief executive of Prudential Real Estate Investors, brought it all together for us quite nicely.

In Smith's view, the real estate universe is subject to a confluence of all the above-mentioned problems and a few others as well. He sees it as a unique time and does not see a rebound for some time.

It's a daunting time to be in the industry, for sure, but at the end of his comments (which you can hear by clicking on the link below) he is starting to see a glimmer of hope here and there. After the past couple years, even a glimmer is a pretty welcome thing.

Smith was one of our featured speakers at this year's summit, which continues through the end of this week. Reuters has exclusively interviewed guests in our offices including New York, London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sydney and others this week.

For more on Smith's comments, please click on the attached link right below:

Allen Smith, CEO, Prudential Real Estate Investors

Remember the good old days where -- if you lived in the United States anyway -- people would talk about "emerging markets"?

We'd nod our heads knowingly, wishing these poor folks the best as they tried to accumulate the swell things we had bought for ourselves. We knew that residents of Mumbai or Caracas or somewhere would never attain the great things we had in such abundance here in the good old USA (Hummers; his and hers monogrammed dishtowels; zero down, 110% mortgages on houses we couldn't afford ... that kind of stuff), but we still wished them well.

So, here we are in 2009 and at this year's Reuters Global Real Estate Summit we find that the new emerging market is ... well, it's right down the block.

According to our guest Tom Shapiro, president of GoldenTree InSite Partners private equity investment firm, the new emerging market in the real estate world is the United States.

Shapiro, in a lively discussion, spoke glowingly about his firm's recent new business in Brazil and about other opportunities he was seeing outside the United States. But, while he said his firm had not made any investment in the U.S. in about two years, he was starting to look for opportunities and see some enthusiasm for deals to get done.

Shapiro said it was still to early to decide what inning the real estate meltdown was in, but he was starting to see some interest from the sidelines about what the "next big thing" would be -- and with cities like New York, San Francisco and Boston as potential growth engines, he was a little hopeful.

Optimism this week has been pretty thin in the real estate world, so we need to take it where we can get it.

Shapiro was one of the featured speakers at this year's global summit, which continues through the end of this week in New York, London, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur.

For more of Shapiro's comments, please click the link below and hear an audio clip:

Tom Shapiro, GoldenTree InSite

When it comes to shopping for bargains these days, retailers are expanding their window of possibilities the same way as increasingly price-conscious consumers.

While the concept of outlet malls and shopping centers was once considered a last-ditch way to unload excess inventory, Steven Tanger, chief executive at Tanger Outlet Centers, says the model is changing...and fast!

Tanger, speaking at the Reuters Real Estate Summit on Tuesday, said that many retailers who had previously shunned the outlet concept are starting to look at the option as more than just something for "the other guy."

Mr. Tanger also gave us an update on how business conditions are looking overall -- including how much the recent spate of lousy weather in New York is weighing on shoppers' moods (it hasn't helped our moods that much either, quite honestly!).

But Mr. Tanger was a bit more sunny than the New York weather has been -- at least about his own space in the retail world. He sees companies and store concepts including Limited Brands, Victoria's Secret and Restoration Hardware all expanding their businesses into outlets.

He even sees an outlet market for plastic shoes -- as Crocs has entered the space.

Tanger, with outlets spread throughout the United States, sees this expansion as a plus for his business and a definite avenue for future growth. While Tanger is a very East Coast-centric concept right now, the map of the United States has a lot of room for growth for the company and Tanger said he and his team are looking for opportunities to expand right away.

Tanger was one of the featured speakers at this year's annual real estate summit. This year the summit is a global effort with guests in cities including New York, London, Shanghai, Sydney and Moscow. The summit runs through this week.

For an audio sampling of Tanger's comments, please click on the link below:

Steven Tanger, CEO Tanger Outlet Centers

Everyone likes to set records. Think about those two giant twins who felt the need to ride motorcycles for their Guinness Book of World Records picture. What were those guys thinking?

Well, after many Reuters Summits, it seemed we set a record on Monday for the use of the word "crap" in one session.

It's not a particularly glorious achievement, of course, but when thinking about the state of the real estate industry these past few years the words could have been a lot more nasty.

At the Reuters Real Estate Summit today, Richard Jones, partner at the Dechert LLP law firm and co-chair of the firm's real estate group, spoke about the kinds of deals that will have to get done to help get the ball rolling on the many restructurings that need to be completed industry-wide in the next few years.

As there are a great number of troubled loans out there, the question of what happens to the worst of them (jokingly granted an effluent-style nickname). Jones, who advises clients on almost every side of an available real estate transaction, gave a good sense of exactly what will have to happen to start seeing the market swing back into action.

Jones was one of the featured speakers at this year's summit, whch continues through this week around the globe. Reuters will be welcoming guests to centers including New York, London, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney.

For a chance to listen to Jones' thoughts, please click on the link below:

Richard Jones, Dechert LLC

It's not a motorcycle or a unicycle - we're talking the overall real estate business cycle.

While the bulk of the focus at this year's Reuters Real Estate Summit is on the commercial real estate side of the business, Richard Dugas, chief executive of Pulte Homes, spoke to us about how things look on the residential side of the aisle.

It remains pretty rough out there.

Dugas told us it was still difficult to predict where things stood and how the rest of 2009 would shape up, but he did sound somewhat hopeful that the sector had leveled off from its dramatically depressed levels seen during 2008.

The confetti was not going off and there was no champagne being passed around just yet, but after a ride south that the residential real estate and building industry has seen, "not getting much worse," sounds a lot like "better".

Dugas was one of the featured speakers at our annual Real Estate summit, which this year has guests across the globe in centers including New York, London, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

To hear Dugas' comments, please click on the link below:

Richard Dugas, CEO Pulte Homes

Not a lot of goodness and cheer in the real estate industry these days.

In the first day of our annual Reuters Real Estate Summit, our first few guests were not seeing a lot of the so-called "green shoots" that other parts of the U.S. economy are supposed to be seeing.

There are still an enormous number of troubles out there -- including a lack of available credit and the dire need to restructure many loans made during the go-go days of a few years ago.

While the homebuilders and their stocks have been walloped the past few years, the attention this week (so far anyway) has been on the commercial side.

When things are bad, people often choose one of two routes -- 1) head down, full of despair and loathing; or 2) hoping that the worst has happened and better days are right around the corner.

For Jacques Gordon, chief strategist at LaSalle Investment Management, he's hoping for the best, but knows there are still some major work to get done.

Gordon was one of the featured guests on the first day of the summit, which is being held this year in cities around the world, including New York, Beijing, London, Mumbai, Sydney and Kuala Lumpur.

For the audio clip of his comments, please click on the following link:

Jacques Gordon

In Detroit, it is a fact of life that you are what you drive.

GM and Chrysler have staked their future -- and some $20 billion of taxpayer-backed loans -- on the idea that they can reinvent themselves as lean, green and mean manufacturers of small and fuel-efficient cars and electric-drive vehicles.

That's a vision that resonates with the Obama administration, which has announced an ambitious target of putting 1 million plug-in hybrid cars like the much-touted Chevy Volt on the road by 2010.

But some of Detroit's highest-profile auto executives are still driving like its 1999. Their rides still harken back to the era when they were the kings of the road.

GM sales chief Mark LaNeve called in from the road on Friday to brief reporters on the automaker's plans to cut dealerships.

LaNeve said he used OnStar's hands-free dialing to join the conference call from the cockpit of a luxury Cadillac Escalade SUV.

"The Slade", as it has become known, gets 12 miles per gallon in the city. Sales are down over 45 percent this year.

GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said this week that his family fleet includes a Saab 9-3 convertible for his wife, a Corvette, a Camaro and a Malibu, which his daughter drives.

Henderson's "baby," he said, was the Corvette, which first hit the streets more than half a century ago. The muscle car's mileage? 16 miles per gallon city. Sales? Down 55 percent.

Across town, Chrysler Chief Executive Bob Nardelli was spotted being chauffeur-driven in a Chrysler 300 sedan to the automaker's Auburn Hills headquarters from an upscale suburban Detroit hotel.

The car is a faded hit for Chrysler, known for it egg-crate grill, muscular styling and powerful engine. Not known so much for its green cred. City mileage? 19 miles per gallon.

Nardelli, who is expected to leave Chrysler in the next few weeks, should take note: President Obama sold his 300C with the 5.7-liter engine shortly after he began his run for the White House.