Last June, at the 2006 European PERE Forum, John Carrafiell, the global co-head of real estate at Morgan Stanley, delivered a keynote address entitled “Markets that matter—where is the money going today?” Of course, for Morgan Stanley, one of the largest property investors in the world, all the markets matter. And their money is going to most of them.
3 min read · 01 February 2013
Moscow is no stranger to intrigue, conspiracy theories or the suppression of information. During the Cold War, the Kremlin proved masters of the game.
3 min read · 01 February 2013
Fund of funds, which raise equity from investors and then commit that equity to individual fund managers, first started popping up in private equity real estate during the late 1990s, almost a decade after the birth of the asset class in the US. First, it was groups like Bessemer Trust and TKP Investments who were selling these products to their clients. Then, about five years ago, the concept really started to pick up steam as US firms like Credit Suisse, Metropolitan Real Estate and Fiduciary Trust began launching their own fund of funds vehicles. Today, of course, fund of funds, much like the rest of the industry, have gone global.
2 min read · 01 February 2013
Earlier this week, Fortress Investment Group agreed to buy Florida East Coast Industries, a railroad company and real estate concern, for $3.5 billion (€2.7 billion). Yes, you read that correctly: a railroad company.
2 min read · 01 February 2013
None of 350 delegates at the annual INREV conference in Madrid last week was wearing a Che Guevara-style black beret. Indeed, surveying those gathered at the luxurious Westin Palace Hotel, it is hard to imagine a group more detached from the iconic Cuban revolutionary.
3 min read · 01 February 2013
A headline on the front page of the New York Times business section this week opined, ‘Too Many Hotels Aren’t Enough.’
3 min read · 01 February 2013
Last month, a group of reporters gathered at the New York City headquarters of a large investment bank for an off-the-record discussion on the growth in the alternative asset industry. Journalists from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times were in attendance, as were members of slightly less august publications. And given the relevance of the topic—two weeks earlier, The Blackstone Group had announced its intentions to go public—the bankers addressed an audience hungry for information.
3 min read · 01 February 2013
In 2005, a German politician said LBO firms could very well descend upon Germany like a “swarm of locusts” as they scoped out deals in his country. Around the same time, firms investing in South Korea got a rude awakening as the country’s tax authorities pursued a number of investigations, deserved or not, into the dealings of private equity firms.
2 min read · 01 February 2013
Given its recent form, The Blackstone Group is not the firm to pick a fight with. During its last high-profile skirmish in the property world, Schwarzman and Co. brushed aside the combined might of Vornado Realty Trust, Starwood Capital and Walton Street to buy Equity Office Properties for $39 billion, the largest private equity real estate deal ever.
2 min read · 01 February 2013
Not since the initial public offering of Goldman Sachs in 1999 have so many people spent so much time with their noses buried in SEC documents. After all, who knew it could be so much fun?
3 min read · 01 February 2013
