COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES

Guarantees

We issue guarantees to certain lenders and hotel owners, chiefly to obtain long-term management contracts. The guarantees generally have a stated maximum funding amount and a term of four to ten years. The terms of guarantees to lenders generally require us to fund if cash flows from hotel operations are inadequate to cover annual debt service or to repay the loan at maturity. The terms of the guarantees to hotel owners generally require us to fund if the hotels do not attain specified levels of operating profit. Guarantee fundings to lenders and hotel owners are generally recoverable as loans repayable to us out of future hotel cash flows and/or proceeds from the sale of hotels. We also enter into project completion guarantees with certain lenders in conjunction with hotels that we or our joint venture partners are building.

We present the maximum potential amount of our future guarantee fundings and the carrying amount of our liability for guarantees for which we are the primary obligor at March 31, 2016 in the following table:



($ in millions) Guarantee Type	Maximum Potential Amount of Future Fundings		Recorded Liability for Guarantees
Debt service	$	113	$	21
Operating profit	100		38
Other	9		1
Total guarantees where we are the primary obligor	$	222	$	60

Our liability at March 31, 2016, for guarantees for which we are the primary obligor is reflected in our Balance Sheets as $60 million of “Other noncurrent liabilities.”

Our guarantees listed in the preceding table include $11 million of debt service guarantees, $44 million of operating profit guarantees, and $1 million of other guarantees that will not be in effect until the underlying properties open and we begin to operate the properties or certain other events occur.

The table above does not include a “contingent purchase obligation,” which is not currently in effect, that we entered into in the 2014 first quarter to provide credit support to lenders for a construction loan. We entered into that agreement in conjunction with signing a management agreement for The Times Square EDITION hotel in New York City (currently projected to open in 2017), and the hotel’s ownership group obtaining acquisition financing and entering into agreements concerning future construction financing for the mixed use project (which includes both the hotel and adjacent retail space). Under the agreement, we granted the lenders the right, upon an uncured event of default by the hotel owner under, and an acceleration of, the mortgage loan, to require us to purchase the hotel component of the property for $315 million during the first two years after opening (the “put option”). Because we would acquire the building upon exercise of the put option, we have not included the amount in the table above. The lenders may extend this period for up to three years to complete foreclosure if the loan has been accelerated and certain other conditions are met. We do not currently expect that the lenders will require us to purchase the hotel component. We have no ownership interest in this hotel.

The preceding table also does not include the following guarantees:

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$57 million of guarantees for Senior Living Services, consisting of lease obligations of $41 million (expiring in 2019) and lifecare bonds of $16 million (estimated to expire in 2019), for which we are secondarily liable. Sunrise Senior Living, Inc. (“Sunrise”) is the primary obligor on both the leases and $3 million of the lifecare bonds; HCP, Inc., as successor by merger to CNL Retirement Properties, Inc. (“CNL”), is the primary obligor on the remaining $13 million of the lifecare bonds. Before we sold the Senior Living Services business in 2003, these were our guarantees of obligations of our then consolidated Senior Living Services subsidiaries. Sunrise and CNL have indemnified us for any fundings we may be called upon to make under these guarantees. Our liability for these guarantees had a carrying value of $3 million at March 31, 2016. In conjunction with our consent of the 2011 extension of certain lease obligations until 2018, Sunrise provided us with $1 million of cash collateral and an $85 million letter of credit issued by Key Bank to secure our continued exposure under the lease guarantees during the extension term and certain other obligations of Sunrise. The letter of credit balance was $49 million at the end of the 2016 first quarter, which decreased as a result of lease payments made and lifecare bonds redeemed. During the extension term, Sunrise agreed to make an annual payment to us from the cash flow of the continuing lease facilities, subject to a $1 million annual minimum. In the 2013 first quarter, Sunrise merged with Health Care REIT, Inc. (“HCN”), and Sunrise’s management business was acquired by an entity formed by affiliates of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP, Beecken Petty O’Keefe & Co., Coastwood Senior Housing Partners LLC, and HCN. In April of 2014, HCN and Revera Inc., a private provider of senior living services, acquired Sunrise’s management business.

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Lease obligations, for which we became secondarily liable when we acquired the Renaissance Hotel Group N.V. in 1997, consisting of annual rent payments of approximately $4 million and total remaining rent payments through the initial term of approximately $18 million. The majority of these obligations expire by the end of 2020. CTF Holdings Ltd. (“CTF”) had originally provided €35 million in cash collateral in the event that we are required to fund under such guarantees, approximately $2 million (€2 million) of which remained at March 31, 2016. Our exposure for the remaining rent payments through the initial term will decline to the extent that CTF obtains releases from the landlords or these hotels exit our system. Since the time we assumed these guarantees, we have not funded any amounts, and we do not expect to fund any amounts under these guarantees in the future.

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A guarantee relating to the timeshare business, which was outstanding at the time of the 2011 Timeshare spin-off and for which we became secondarily liable as part of the spin-off. The guarantee relates to a Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (“MVW”) payment obligation, for which we had an exposure of $5 million (7 million Singapore Dollars) at March 31, 2016. MVW has indemnified us for this obligation, which we expect will expire in 2022. We have not funded any amounts under this obligation, and do not expect to do so in the future. Our liability for this obligation had a carrying value of $1 million at March 31, 2016.

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A guarantee for a lease, originally entered into in 2000, for which we became secondarily liable in 2012 as a result of our sale of the ExecuStay corporate housing business to Oakwood Worldwide (“Oakwood”). Oakwood has indemnified us for the obligations under this guarantee. Our total exposure at the end of the 2016 first quarter for this guarantee was $6 million in future rent payments through the end of the lease in 2019.

In addition to the guarantees described in the preceding paragraphs, in conjunction with financing obtained for specific projects or properties owned by joint ventures in which we are a party, we may provide industry standard indemnifications to the lender for loss, liability, or damage occurring as a result of the actions of the other joint venture owner or our own actions.

Commitments

In addition to the guarantees we note in the preceding paragraphs, as of March 31, 2016, we had the following commitments outstanding, which are not recorded on our Balance Sheets:


•	A commitment to invest up to $22 million of equity for non-controlling interests in a partnership that plans to purchase or develop limited-service properties in Asia. We expect to fund $3 million of this commitment in 2016. We do not expect to fund the remaining $19 million of this commitment prior to the end of the commitment period in 2016.

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We have a right and under certain circumstances an obligation to acquire our joint venture partner’s remaining interests in two joint ventures over the next five years at a price based on the performance of the ventures. In conjunction with this contingent obligation, we advanced $20 million (€15 million) in deposits, $13 million (€11 million) of which are remaining. The amounts on deposit are refundable to the extent we do not acquire our joint venture partner’s remaining interests.


•	A commitment to invest up to $10 million of equity into a joint venture in which we have a non-controlling interest in order to fund renovations of guest rooms. We expect to fully fund this commitment, which expires in 2016.


•	A loan commitment of $36 million related to the construction of a North American Full-Service property. We expect to fund this commitment in 2017.


•	Various commitments to purchase information technology hardware, software, accounting, finance, and maintenance services in the normal course of business totaling $131 million. We expect to purchase goods and services subject to these commitments as follows: $70 million in 2016, $49 million in 2017, $9 million in 2018, and $3 million thereafter.


•	Several commitments aggregating $49 million which we do not expect to fund.

Letters of Credit

At March 31, 2016, we had $77 million of letters of credit outstanding (all outside the Credit Facility, as defined in Footnote No. 7, “Long-Term Debt”), the majority of which were for our self-insurance programs. Surety bonds issued as of March 31, 2016, totaled $161 million, the majority of which state governments requested in connection with our self-insurance programs.

Legal Proceedings

On January 19, 2010, several former Marriott employees (the “plaintiffs”) filed a putative class action complaint against us and the Stock Plan (the “defendants”), alleging that certain equity awards of deferred bonus stock granted to the plaintiffs and other current and former employees for fiscal years 1963 through 1989 are subject to vesting requirements under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (“ERISA”), that are in certain circumstances more rapid than those set forth in the awards. The action was brought in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland (Greenbelt Division), and Dennis Walter Bond Sr. and Michael P. Steigman were the remaining named plaintiffs. Class certification was denied, and on January 16, 2015, the court granted Marriott’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case. Plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and we cross-appealed on statute of limitation grounds. Oral arguments were held before the Fourth Circuit on October 28, 2015, and on January 29, 2016, the Fourth Circuit unanimously granted Marriott’s motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the action was untimely and affirmed the judgment in Marriott’s favor. The court subsequently denied the plaintiffs’ motion for rehearing en banc, and issued a formal mandate giving effect to its judgment on March 8, 2016.

In March 2012, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (“KFTC”) obtained documents from two of our managed hotels in Seoul, Korea in connection with an investigation which we believe is focused on pricing of hotel services within the Seoul region. Since then, the KFTC has conducted additional fact-gathering at those two hotels and also has collected information from another Marriott managed hotel located in Seoul. We understand that the KFTC also has sought documents from numerous other hotels in Seoul and other parts of Korea that we do not operate, own, or franchise. We have not received a complaint or other legal process. We are cooperating with this investigation, which continues to be ongoing.

Between November 18, 2015 and December 18, 2015, seven lawsuits challenging the Starwood Combination were filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Maryland on behalf of purported shareholders of Starwood, naming various combinations of Starwood’s directors, Starwood, Marriott, and others, as defendants. On February 11, 2016 the Court issued an order dismissing, without prejudice, all claims and all counts against Marriott, and on April 4, 2016, the Court issued an order dismissing all claims and counts against Starwood.