TRECAP Partners believes in trying to take advantage of distress. Indeed, in the year-and-a-half since TRECAP was founded, the Sarasota, Florida-based firm has tapped two of the most distressed firms around for opportunities to grow its fledging operation: namely Lehman Brothers and Capmark Investments. Robert Fabiszewski Doug Tibbetts
At the end of March, TRECAP – co-founded in late 2008 by former Equitable Real Estate Investment Management executives Doug Tibbetts, Gary Sligar and Paul Klick – hired Michael McNamara, an ex-acquisitions principal at Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners, to take charge of its deal activities.
However, perhaps more significant was the acquisition of Capmark Investments’ real estate equity business and its 29-strong team.
The deal, first announced in mid-March, saw TRECAP acquire the investment management contracts and general partnership interests in Capmark’s three US and one UK equity property funds as well as several single client accounts. Capmark Investments’ management team, including Robert Fabiszewski, William Martin, Wayne Harris, Paul Dolinoy and Gene Conway, and 25 other real estate professionals, including five in London, have since transferred to TRECAP. 
We needed to find a stable home to sustain the business we had built over the last 14 years.
For Fabiszewski and Dolinoy the deal marked a successful outcome to a tumultuous time for Capmark Investments and its parent company and real estate lender, Capmark Financial. Watching the “storm clouds gathering on the horizon” for Capmark Financial in early 2009, Fabiszewski and Dolinoy said they approached the parent company about trying to find a new, “more stable home” for the real estate equity arm. “We had a great client base and we needed to do what was in the best interests of our clients,” said Dolinoy.
Capmark Financial filed for Chapter 11 protection in October 2009, with bidding for the equity funds business subject to a rigid bankruptcy process. Despite that though, the real estate equity group attracted bids from up to 15 parties. Fabiszewski said the 20 limited partners in the four commingled funds, which raised a total of $1.5 billion of equity and have about $160 million of remaining dry powder, also moved quickly to back the TRECAP acquisition.
The LPs gave their unanimous support to the TRECAP deal by September last year. “We needed to find a stable home to sustain the business we had built over the last 14 years,” said Fabiszewski.
Having initially joined forces with real estate service company Transwestern to set up TRECAP, chief executive officer Tibbets looked to US developer, Hunt Companies, to help finance the Capmark acquisition and provide support services. People always worry that they are missing something if they delay doing a deal but it’s still very early in this real estate cycle. There are many more opportunities to come.
“When we set up TRECAP in 2008 we thought there would be some tremendous buying opportunities in light of market conditions,” said Tibbets.
That has certainly proved true for the firm, he said, adding that the focus was to complete investing Capmark’s third value-added, now focused more towards core and core-plus sectors, as well as expand operations in Europe, driven by Tim Fuller in London.
The firm has already closed on one of its first deals, acquiring in April a majority interest in a multifamily asset in Kirkland, Washington state, in a joint venture with private investment firm Pacific Property Company. “People always worry that they are missing something if they delay doing a deal but it’s still very early in this real estate cycle,” Tibbetts said. “There are many more opportunities to come.”
If you do not receive this within five minutes, please try to sign in again. If the problem persists, please email: 
