GoldenTree InSite goes it alone

GoldenTree InSite Partners is rebranding itself as GTIS Partners after agreeing to spin-off from its parent company GoldenTree Asset Management. GTAM will retain its equity interest in the real estate company it helped set up with Thomas Shapiro five years ago, with both sides continuing “to collaborate on investments in the future”.

GoldenTree InSite’s new name will go into effect on 1 July. 

Shapiro said in a statement the change had come about after meeting “predetermined milestones” originally set in 2005.

“When GTAM’s chief executive officer and founder, Steve Tananbaum, and I formed the joint venture in 2005, we agreed that when GTIS achieved these benchmarks, it would become an independent entity,” Shapiro said.

GTIS Partners has just returned to investing in the US real estate markets following a two-year absence, when it largely focused on investing in Brazil. In March, the firm closed the first deal of a joint venture with Texas homebuilder LGI Homes buying 175 improved residential lots in the Chisholm Springs subdivision in Fort Worth, Texas. The venture will see the firm invest $50 million in equity, as part of its wider strategy of investing up to $500 million in residential land and development projects in the US.

GTIS last year teamed up with another homebuilder, Hovnanian Enterprises, to buy and develop residential housing in Chicago and Palm Beach County, Florida.

Shapiro told PERE magazine in April that the firm’s focus in the US was primarily on broken condo and land deals, arguing there were still too few opportunities in the office, retail and industrial sectors owing to non-stable net operating incomes and banks’ willingness to restructure and extend debt coming due on the assets.

GTIS also recently appointed former Lehman Brothers senior vice president Steven Gorey as chief operating officer and hired former Morgan Stanley Real Estate executive Richard Cohen as managing director on its investor relations team.

Shapiro was formerly a senior managing director at Tishman Speyer, in charge of the global capital equity markets and dispositions group.