Margin Calls Force CEO to Shed Majority of Stock He Held in Firm

Dave Schaeffer is running out of options to stave off the collapse of the Washington, DC, property empire he built over three decades.

It was bad enough that his commercial real estate portfolio has lost more than half its value since 2022. But shares of the internet service provider he founded in 1999 — which he’s sold in record amounts to pay down debt on his properties — have also plunged this year. That selloff reached such extremes earlier this month that JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Royal Bank of Canada seized more than $82 million of shares he’d pledged ...