BUSINESS MEMO: 'TALLEST BUILDING'

Get your checkbook ready, Donald Trump.

A developer who won city approval last fall to build the world's tallest building in downtown Chicago has run into financial problems that may allow someone else, possibly Trump, to take over the $500 million project.

Trump offered last October to join the project and has been scouting for rival projects since being rebuffed by developer Scott Toberman. Now Toberman's bid to build the residential-office building may be over because of his inability to put together financing.

The site at the corner of Dearborn and Madison streets currently contains a 17-story vacant office building. It is just a few blocks from the Sears Tower, which held world's-tallest honors from 1973-96 until being aced out by the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.

Banque Worms, a New York subsidiary of a Paris bank, took title to the property last month after a default on a $22 million mortgage, the Tribune reported, citing property documents. Toberman, president of European American Realty, has little development experience.

Abraham Wallach, an executive vice president with the New York-based Trump Organization, did not immediately return a telephone message Friday. The Tribune said he had declined to comment.