LGT Capital buys Clerestory

The Pfaeffikon, Switzerland-based global alternative investment manager has entered the real estate business with its acquisition of the New York-based real estate investment and advisory firm.


LGT Capital Partners, a Pfaeffikon, Switzerland-based global alternative investment manager, has acquired New York-based real estate investment and advisory firm Clerestory Capital Advisors via its subsidiary, LGT Capital Partners Holding USA. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. 

Under the terms of the deal, Clerestory will now be called LGT Clerestory and serve as the real estate arm of LGT Capital. One source told PERE that LGT Capital made this acquisition because the firm wanted to enter the real estate business and felt that Clerestory was a good fit. 

Roberto Paganoni, chief executive officer of LGT Capital, said in a statement: “Acquiring Clerestory will enhance our investment expertise in the real estate market and enable us to broaden and strengthen our multi-alternatives investment firm.”

In the wake of the acquisition, the core business of LGT Clerestory will remain the same: providing investors with global access to real estate via funds, co-investments and secondary investments. Established in 2007 by Joanne Douvas and Tommy Brown, Clerestory launched its first fund of funds that same year, focusing on small, opportunistic real estate funds on a global basis. Douvas said she is “very pleased” that the firm will “benefit from a global institutional investment platform, enhanced opportunities for product development and additional resources for further developing its client base.”

Douvas and Brown will continue to run LGT Clerestory, but they will be joined by two other individuals, Sascha Graf and Tycho Sneyers. According to the firm’s updated website, Graf is a partner at LGT Capital and, prior to joining LGT in 2005, he was the head of hedge fund investments for Vontobel Asset Management in Zurich. Meanwhile, Sneyers is a managing partner at LGT and, prior to joining the firm in 2001, he co-founded Altgate Capital, an alternative investments research and advisory firm. Before that, he worked at Goldman Sachs in the equities and investment banking divisions in London and New York.

For the time being, LGT Clerestory will remain in the same office at 11 East 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan. One source noted that LGT Clerestory and LGT Capital may look to combine their New York offices sometime in the first half of 2013. 

LGT Capital is an alternative investment manager with more than 300 institutional clients and more than $25 billion in assets under management from its hedge fund and private equity activity. The firm has an international team of more than 190 professionals, with affiliated offices in New York, London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing.