Carlyle taps Greenhill exec for real estate fundraising

The Carlyle Group has hired Greenhill & Co managing director Douglas Kinney to bolster its global real estate fundraising efforts, PERE has learned. Kinney started at the Washington, DC-based firm on Tuesday as managing director.

The move is seen as a successful stroke for Carlyle’s investor relations team, which expanded in the run-up to the firm’s initial public offering in May and in the wake of raising $2.3 billion for the firm’s sixth US real estate fund, Carlyle Realty Partners VI, in December. According to two people familiar with the matter, Carlyle is expected to launch an Asia-focused real estate fund in the very near future and possibly another US vehicle.

Kinney spent more than two years with Greenhill in its Chicago office, after previously being a director and founding member of Credit Suisse’s Real Estate Private Fund Group (REPFG), where he spent 10 years. He left REPFG in April 2010 as part of the wave of departures the Swiss bank suffered to Greenhill.

Kinney’s move to Carlyle reunites him with Alok Gaur, both of whom worked together at REPFG and Greenhill. Gaur joined Carlyle in March 2011 and was believed to be Carlyle’s first dedicated global real estate investor relations professional.

Since then, Carlyle has bolstered its wider investor relations team, hiring Jessica Hoffman Brennan, a managing director in Credit Suisse’s private equity fundraising business, and promoting 11 real estate professionals to senior posts. Commenting on the promotions in January, Carlyle said real estate was “contributing in a more significant manner to the performance of our funds.”

Meanwhile, Greenhill also has been ramping up its real estate team, growing from 12 professionals in 2010 to 19 today after closing on more than $3.5 billion of real estate mandates, according to a separate source familiar with the matter. One of the latest hires is former QIC Global Infrastructure executive Sally Adele Box, the firm confirmed in a separate statement on its recruiting efforts. Box, who joins the firm as a vice president based in Sydney later this month, will focus on real estate fundraising efforts, as well as working with the firm’s private capital clients.

In July, PERE revealed that Greenhill had won the mandate to help raise capital for Tishman Speyer’s latest US fund, Tishman Speyer Real Estate Venture VIII. The fund is targeting at least $750 million and, at the end of July, had closed on $500 million without the use of a placement agent. Greenhill, which is expected to focus on reaching out to US investors while Tishman markets to foreign investors, is believed to be the first placement agent that the New York-based developer and fund manager has hired. Greenhill also helped raise The Related Companies’ first real estate opportunity fund, with the New York-based developer closing the Related Real Estate Recovery Fund on $825 million in January.