Critics of real estate investor Nicholas Schorsch, and the acquisition spree he engineered at RCS Capital, have long claimed he was overpaying for properties.
 
Turns out, he did.
 
RCS Capital, or RCAP, wrote off a combined $291 million from the value of its broker-dealers and other properties in the third quarter, according to RCAP’s latest 10-Q, filed this week. That’s in addition to another $45 million in losses taken earlier this year.
 
Just about everything RCAP has bought has taken a hit.
 
Here’s the list of write-offs RCAP took on its broker-dealer firms in the third quarter ended September:
 
• Cetera Financial Holdings, bought for $1.15 billion in 2014. Written down by $134 million.
 
• Summit Financial Services Group, bought for $57.2 million in 2014. Written down by $9.9 million.
           
• First Allied Holdings, bought for $177 million in 2014. Written down by $44.8 million.
 
• Investors Capital Holdings, bought for $52.5 million in 2014. Written down by $26.7 million.
 
• VSR Group, bought for $66.7 million this year. Written down by $28.0 million.
 
• Girard Securities, bought for $27.8 million this year. Written down by $13.2 million.
 
Earlier this year, RCAP wrote off $13.6 million on J.P. Turner & Company, bought in 2014 for $32.7 million.
 
Other business units were also marked down in the latest quarter.
 
RCAP wrote off $15.3 million on the Hatteras Funds Group, an alternatives manager acquired for $30 million in 2014 ($10 million was deferred and unpaid). This month, RCAP agreed to sell Hatteras to a management group for $5.5 million.
 
RCAP just wrote off another $18.2 million from its $35.1 million purchase of
Docupace in 2014, an electronic processing firm.
 
RCAP also threw in the towel on its Trupoly acquisition, an investor relations firm that was to be part of RCAP’s crowdfunding platform. Trupoly, acquired earlier this year for an undisclosed amount, was written off to the tune of $755,000 in the latest quarter. It will be sold for an immaterial amount, RCAP said.

And earlier this year, RCAP wrote off $30.6 million from its 2014 purchase of Strategic Capital Partners for $77.5 million. StratCap, as the unit is known, along with Realty Capital Securities, RCAP’s original wholesaling unit, are being sold to Apollo Global Management for a total of $6 million.

The high debt level taken on to acquire its lineup of businesses, combined with lackluster performance, has put RCAP in a desperate search for cash and debt relief.

The company has retained Lazard to consider its options, and said this week that it has received proposals from “multiple” parties to provide additional capital or buy assets.
RCAP has not provided details on what those proposals might be.

But RCAP did disclose that if it cannot raise more funds or cut debt, there is “substantial doubt” that the company can survive.