The main message from PERE’s second European Private Equity Real Estate Forum held in London in early June: Work very hard if you want to carry on making money in this asset class. The first half of the current decade will undoubtedly be remembered as a golden age of property investing, but will a 12 percent net annual return on an unlevered basis remain as readily available as it has been? Hardly, warned Matthew Ryall, a member of real estate research and strategy at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in London who sat on the Forum’s concluding panel. Without active (and clever) asset management, performance will prove elusive.Â
Founded in 2003 by former executives of Franchise Finance Corporation of America, Spirit Finance is a publicly listed REIT focused on sale-leasebacks for the retail, service and distribution industries. With balance sheet assets of approximately $2.5 billion, Spirit recently completed the largest retail sale-leaseback ever, the $815 million acquisition of the real estate assets of ShopKo, the retailer recently acquired by Sun Capital Partners. Here, Christopher Volk talks about the ShopKo deal, the economic environment for retailers and why corporate capital efficiency may be the next big wave in corporate America.
Starting from an NYU dorm room in the early 1980s, Joseph Sitt began purchasing property in the blighted neighborhoods of New York and converting them into inner-city shopping strips. Along the way, he built up his own retail chains, renovated outer-borough shopping centers and built Thor Equities into an investment firm with more than $2 billion invested in urban mixed-use strategies across the US. Thor, which closed its first commingled fund in 2004, recently purchased the Palmer House Hilton in downtown Chicago. Here Sitt speaks about urban retail, the need to think multi-dimensionally and the importance of a good sound system.
Over the past few years, turnaround investor Sun Capital Partners has been involved with a number of high-profile retail buyouts, including Mervyns and the Pamida and ShopKo chains, as well as specialty retailers like Wickes Furniture, Mattress Firm and Nationwide Furniture. But as Gary Talarico, head of the Boca Raton, Florida-based firm's New York office, is quick to point out, the firm doesn't seek out retail or real estate deals. Rather, the firm invests in distressed companies and looks to use the company's property in the recovery.
Over the past few years, retail has become a popular target for private equity and property investors alike, providing all manner of opportunity—and risk—for shop-savvy investors. By Aaron Lovell
Founded in 1995 by Jon Bauer, Janice Stanton and Gil Tenzer, Contrarian Capital is a multi-strategy hedge fund focused on distressed opportunities. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm currently has over $4 billion in funds under management, including the Contrarian Real Estate Fund, which has a $250 million capacity. Here, Tenzer, who oversees the firm's real estate platform, speaks about Contrarian's focus on distress, the difficulty of finding opportunities in today's market and why every dog has his day.
Demand for condominiums is faltering across the US as speculators exit the market. Can private equity real estate firms pick up the pieces? By Alison Granito
Italy's non-performing loan market rolls on while investors wait for a new wave of distressed real estate assets. By Robin Marriott
Distressed real estate opportunities may not be as ubiquitous as in the past, but savvy property investors know that something is always going badly somewhere—you just have to know where to look.
Over the past six years, Mark Newman and Gerald Parkes have both run the European arm of Lehman Brothers' private equity real estate operations. Here the duo talk about the investment bank's silo-free model, their strong commitment to long-term partnerships and why investing in real estate is a lot like playing golf. By Paul Fruchbom
If you do not receive this within five minutes, please try to sign in again. If the problem persists, please email: