EXCLUSIVE: Former global RE head at Goldman raises $1.5bn

Edward Siskind, the former global head of Goldman Sachs Real Estate Principal Investment Area (REPIA), has seeded a new platform with around $1.5 billion of capital from a sovereign wealth investor. Sources say that he has been in the US for talks with a variety of potential other capital partners to further grow the platform and that GIC Private is the cornerstone investor.

Siskind, who was a 23-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, has founded Cale Street Partners as a Europe-focused real estate finance firm to provide senior and mezzanine debt as well as equity capital in partnership with ‘best-in-class’ developers, operators and institutions.

Siskind’s return to investing marks a remarkable comeback after leaving Goldman Sachs in December 2011. Since then, he has been involved in a number of peripheral real estate roles, such as serving on the advisory board of Bridges Ventures, the London-based fund manager that specializes in sustainable and ‘impact’ investing, and is a member of the steering committee of the international advisory board for the real estate academic initiative at Harvard University.

He began his career at Goldman Sachs in 1988 and was one of the founding members of REPIA in 1992. He relocated from New York to London in 1999 to head REPIA in Europe, becoming one of the most influential professionals in the European private equity real estate arena. He became the group’s global head in 2009 amid a string of departures in the wake of the global financial crisis, when REPIA shrunk dramatically.

Camina-Mendizabal, former Goldman Sachs head of real estate finance, EMEA, has joined him at Cale, along with Wilson Lee, former head of the real estate principal finance group in Europe and Asia Pacific at UBS who was also Lehman Brothers as head of Europe within its global real estate group. Dean Hodcroft, a partner at advisory firm, EY, is also joining.