Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Mortgage REIT to Launch CRE Platform

Jack Taylor, the head of Prudential Real Estate Investors’ global debt unit, has joined Pine River Capital Management to oversee a commercial real estate investment program that will be seeded with $500 million of equity.

He’s been named global head of commercial real estate at Pine River, a Minnetonka, Minn., investment manager, and has been joined by his Pru team members, Stephen Alpart and Steven Plust, who were named managing directors.

Their responsibilities will include oversight of the commercial real estate investment program being planned by Pine River’s affiliate, Two Harbors Investment Corp., a mortgage REIT. It said that it plans to launch a “commercial real estate initiative” that would have an initial equity commitment of $500 million. Additional details could not be learned immediately.

Taylor is well known in the global high-yield debt world. He and Plust joined Pru in 2009 from Five Mile Capital Partners, a Stamford, Conn., investment manager, while Alpart previously was managing director and co-head of opportunistic lending at Capmark Investments of Horsham, Pa.

The three all had worked at Paine Webber and Co. prior to and after the investment bank’s merger with UBS in 2000.

Taylor co-headed UBS’ Americas and European real estate investment-banking operation and had led PaineWebber’s real estate group. At Five Mile, he was portfolio manager for the firm’s Structured Income Fund.

Their addition to the “Pine River team will enable Two Harbors to diversify our portfolio into commercial real estate assets,” explained Thomas Siering, chief executive of the REIT. “The opportunity in the commercial real estate market is attractive.”

The REIT’s assets as of Sept. 30 included a portfolio of residential mortgages with a balance of $4 billion; $12.7 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities, and a residential mortgage servicer affiliate. It also owns shares in Silver Bay Realty Trust Corp., a REIT that invests in single-family homes, which began business as a venture between Two Rivers and Provident Real Estate Advisors.

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