EXCLUSIVE: Credit Suisse loses senior RE capital raisers

Two executives from the Swiss bank’s real estate private fund business have left or are leaving, including the head of the group.

The Credit Suisse Private Fund Group (PFG), the placement agent and advisory arm of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, has seen a shakeup in recent weeks within its global real estate practice, following the departure and impending departure of two top capital raisers on the team.

Managing director Anthony Carpenito, who was head of the real estate group and was based in the firm’s New York offices, left Credit Suisse earlier this month and is said to be joining Boston-based hedge fund Abrams Capital Management. Meanwhile, another senior member of the real estate team, Sasha Silver, who had been a director based in London, has been hired as a member of the client development team at London-based real estate investment management firm Tristan Capital Management. She will be departing Credit Suisse in a few weeks and will start at Tristan in late May. 

Both Carpenito and Silver had been longtime Credit Suisse professionals. Carpenito came aboard in 2005 as part of the hedge fund team within PFG, and then switched to what was then called the Real Estate Private Fund Group in 2007. In the ensuing years, the group saw turnover among its senior management, beginning with co-founders David Hodes and Doug Weill, who were promoted in 2008 to run all of Credit Suisse’s principal real estate activities before leaving to launch their own real estate advisory firm, Hodes Weill & Associates, in 2009.  

The group was then led by group co-heads Bill Thompson, Walter Stackler, Pamela Wright and Fredrik Elwing, until all four exited to establish a real estate placement advisory business at global investment bank Greenhill in 2010. Carpenito took over the business following the executives’ departure, and REPFG was absorbed into the larger private fund business. PFG’s distribution team works on products across various asset classes, including private equity and real estate, but has retained a number of real estate-focused professionals on staff. PERE understands that Carpenito’s and Silver’s responsibilities will be assumed by other members of PFG. 

Meanwhile, Silver had clocked an even longer tenure at Credit Suisse, having been at the firm since 2001 and part of the real estate team since 2010, where she led origination and project management for European real estate advisory and fundraising mandates. Prior to joining the real estate fund group, Silver was a director in the real estate investment banking team, where she executed corporate finance transactions for private and public real estate clients across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 

Since its founding in 1994, Credit Suisse’s PFG has raised 290 funds totaling more than $400 billion in capital, including approximately $5 billion across five real estate funds since 2010. Recent real estate fundraises included the debut vehicle from Cypress Equities Real Estate Investment Management, Cypress Acquisition Partners Retail Fund, which closed on its hard cap of $400 million last summer. The group, which has 80 professionals in London, Hong Kong, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Melbourne and Tokyo, also has advised on more than $23 billion of transactions on the secondary market.