Mount Kellett Capital Management has recruited ex-Perella Weinberg Partners real estate executive James MacNamara in London as the firm looks to build a real estate platform.
MacNamara has joined having spent three years in the London office of New York’s Perella Weinberg, where he worked on its €1.2 billion European private equity real estate fund. Prior to that he was a director working for the real estate opportunity funds of RREEF, the alternative investment and asset management arm of Deutsche Bank, where he worked for 10 years.
Mount Kellett is the private equity firm started in 2008 by Mark McGoldrick, dubbed “Goldfinger” after reportedly earning a $40-$70 million bonus in 2006 while co head of its Global Special Situations Group at Goldman Sachs.
The firm has been reportedly raising money for special situations investments across the globe.
In January, PERENews.com’s sister site, PEIAsia.com reported the firm’s maiden fund planned to allocate about 45 percent of its capital to North America, a third to Asia and the remainder to Europe. A source told PEIAsia the firm had seen a second close on its maiden fund on just under $2 billion in January 2009 and had a team of 70 in place across the US, Europe and Asia, of which about 50 were investment professionals.
According to Reuters, Mount Kellett garnered commitments of about $2.5 billion by the middle of last year. In a later report, Reuters reported the firm had scaled back on investment professionals in Asia and in December last year, it emerged that Blake Hutcheson, head of global real estate at Mount Kellet, was leaving after two years to become chief executive officer of Oxford Properties Group, the C$12bn real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System.
No-one at the firm was immediately available for comment.
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