including reducing our access to capital or increasing our vulnerability to general adverse economic, industry and market conditions. In addition, if a property is mortgaged to secure payment of indebtedness and income from such property is insufficient to pay that indebtedness, the property could be foreclosed upon by the mortgagee resulting in a loss of income and a decline in our total asset value. If any of the foregoing occurs, we could be materially and adversely affected. The agreements that govern our indebtedness contain various covenants that impose restrictions on us that might affect our ability to operate freely. We have a variety of unsecured debt, including the Credit Facilities, senior unsecured notes and commercial paper, and secured property level debt. Certain of the agreements that govern our indebtedness contain covenants, including, among other things, limitations on our ability to incur secured and unsecured indebtedness, sell all or substantially all of our assets and engage in mergers and certain acquisitions. In addition, certain of the agreements that govern our indebtedness contain financial covenants that require us to maintain certain financial ratios, including certain coverage ratios. These covenants may restrict our ability to pursue certain business initiatives or certain transactions that might otherwise be advantageous to us. In addition, our ability to comply with these provisions might be affected by events beyond our control. Failure to comply with any of our financing covenants could result in an event of default, which, if not cured or waived, could accelerate the related indebtedness as well as other of our indebtedness, which could have a material adverse effect on us. Disruption in the capital and credit markets may adversely affect our ability to access external financings for our growth and ongoing debt service requirements. We depend on external financings, principally debt financings, to fund the growth of our business, execute on our business model, and to ensure that we can meet ongoing maturities of our outstanding debt. Our access to financing depends on our credit ratings, the willingness of lending institutions and other debt investors to grant credit to us and conditions in the capital markets in general. An economic recession may cause extreme volatility and disruption in the capital and credit markets. We rely upon the Credit Facilities as sources of funding for numerous transactions. Our access to these funds is dependent upon the ability of each of the participants to the Credit Facilities to meet their funding commitments to us. When markets are volatile, access to capital and credit markets could be disrupted over an extended period of time and one or more financial institutions may not have the available capital to meet their previous commitments to us. The failure of one or more participants to the Credit Facilities to meet their funding commitments to us could have a material adverse effect on us, including as a result of making it difficult to obtain the financing we may need for future growth and/or meeting our debt service requirements. Additionally, a high interest rate environment, as we are currently experiencing, could prevent us from accessing capital at attractive interest rates, which could adversely impact our ability to refinance existing debt at maturity as well as our ability to fund development and/or opportunistic acquisition activities. We cannot assure you that we will be able to obtain the financing we need for the future growth of our business, execution on our business model or to meet our debt service requirements, or that a sufficient amount of financing will be available to us on favorable terms, or at all. Adverse changes in our credit ratings could affect our borrowing capacity and borrowing terms. The Operating Partnership’s outstanding senior unsecured notes, the Credit Facilities, the Commercial Paper program, and Simon’s preferred stock are periodically rated by nationally recognized credit rating agencies. The credit ratings are based on our operating performance, liquidity and leverage ratios, financial condition and prospects, and other factors viewed by the credit rating agencies as relevant to us and our industry and the economic outlook in general. Our credit ratings can affect the amount of capital we can access, as well as the terms of any financing we obtain. Since we depend primarily on debt financing to fund the growth of our business, an adverse change in our credit ratings, including actual changes and changes in outlook, or even the initiation of a review of our credit ratings that could result in an adverse change, could have a material adverse effect on us. An increase in interest rates would increase our interest costs on variable rate debt and could adversely impact our ability to refinance existing debt on attractive terms, or at all; our hedging interest rate protection arrangements may not effectively limit our interest rate risk. As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately $2.3 billion of outstanding consolidated indebtedness that bears interest at variable rates, and we may incur more variable rate indebtedness in the future. When interest rates increase, then so does the interest costs on our unhedged variable rate debt, which could adversely affect our cash flows and our
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