When a firm loses a key professional it can cause no end of headaches. What happens though when an entire team jumps ship?
That was the position Credit Suisse found itself in last month when a significant portion of the Real Estate Private Fund Group placement team left the bank to join up-and-coming rival Greenhill & Co. In losing up to 12 professionals at the start of April, Credit Suisse had little choice but to respond quickly, rolling the REPFG into its private equity fundraising platform, the Private Fund Group.
|  It’s not what we asked for, but it has happened and we will deal with it. We are going to surprise our skeptics out there. We are in this for the long-term and we are hungry for the challenge.
PFG co-head and managing director John Robertshaw |
Since then, new head Anthony Carpenito has been charged with rebuilding the business with the help of Eric Lemer in London, Maja Orekar in New York, and PFG co-heads and managing directors John Robertshaw and Anthony Bowe. It will be no small feat for Credit Suisse, which has lost some of the most prominent names in real estate fundraising globally in the past year.
Last July, two of REPFG’s co-founders, David Hodes and Doug Weill, left the group they founded with William Thompson in 2000 to launch their own advisory firm. In March, Thompson – along with his co-heads Walter Stackler, Pamela Wright and Fredrik Elwing – had also left to join Greenhill as managing directors to build the firm’s real estate fundraising business.
By April, they had been joined by a raft of REPFG professionals, including New York-based Manjul Ramchandani and Lee Purcell, Chicago-based Doug Kinney and Alok Gaur and London-based Daniel Taylor and Ben Linder.
Jan-Christoph Klein and Chris Keber are also believed to have left REPFG for other outfits, with Keber departing for Starwood Capital Group.
In such a personality-driven business as fundraising, many professionals have questioned Credit Suisse’s ability to remain one of the world’s top property placement agents given the departures. However, for Robertshaw there is no question of what needs to happen next. “It’s not what we asked for, but it has happened and we will deal with it,” he said. “We are going to surprise our skeptics out there. We are in this for the long-term and we are hungry for the challenge.”
Consolidating the REPFG into the wider private fund group was an idea under general discussion prior to the departures of Thompson et al to Greenhill, although it is not believed to have been a primary reason behind the moves.
| We have been through a lot of cycles of fundraising as a team and we are ready for the future. Robertshaw |
Robertshaw stressed PFG was not coming fresh to the real estate sphere, having raised $18 billion of capital for private equity real estate funds before a dedicated group was established in 2000, when Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette merged with Credit Suisse. PFG is also currently raising real asset capital for various infrastructure funds, having raised $5.6 billion for the Global Infrastructure Partners fund in 2008.
Although it will take Credit Suisse some time to get back up to speed, Robertshaw said the firm had the resources to succeed. Out of 68 professionals in the PFG group, including the newly-merged REPFG team, 24 were distribution executives who would be selling funds and investment products to investors. The project management team remains intact, he said. “We have been through a lot of cycles of fundraising as a team and we are ready for the future.”
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