Goldman poaches Deutsche Bank property chief

Goldman poaches Deutsche Bank property chief
By James Wallace Paul Norman - Thursday, August 04, 2011 15:25

Goldman Sachs has poached Fabrizio Grena, a director in Deutsche Bank’s special situations team, as the wider team restructuring at the German bank continues, CoStar News can reveal.

http://www.costar.co.uk/en/assets/news/2011/August/Goldman-poaches-Deutsche-Banks-director-Fabrizio-Grena-/

Grena left Deutsche two weeks ago. He joined Deutsche in February 2007, where latterly his focus was in managing the bank’s distressed loan portfolios.

He will join Goldman in October, reporting into Goldman’s head of commercial real estate special situations Julian Salisbury.

There has been considerable change to the make-up Deutsche Bank’s European commercial real estate team this year. The genesis of its reorganisation dates back to the surprise departure of former global head of real estate finance, John Nacos in February, mid-way through the bank’s high-profile marketing initiative for the £302m securitisation of Blackstone’s Chiswick Park.

Following Nacos’s departure from the bank, his former boss Elad Shraga, split the role back into the former geographic focus of Europe and the US, headed by Cyril Courbage and Jonathan Pollock, respectively, with a mandate to more fully integrate their real estate finance operation into Shraga’s wider global structured credit solution division.

Shraga believes this strategy will better enable Deutsche Bank to better exploit untapped synergies, particularly around the bank’s, until recently, segregated distribution networks.

“Deutsche Bank is trying to get more integrated, working across existing distribution networks and gain synergies to become more efficient and effective,” a person familiar with the restructuring explained.

Two weeks ago, Bonnie Ko joined Deutsche Bank. Ko is a former Morgan Stanley real estate vice-president, who more recently was a principal at Pembridge Lane Advisory. Ko is working out of London over the summer and will move over to Deutsche’s New York office in early autumn.

Ko’s move to the New York office follows that of European real estate finance director Chris Dunn, whose departure from London made way for a more senior replacement in Don Belanger, UBS’ former head of European real estate capital markets, who returned to the bank after quitting for Credit Suisse in March 2005. Belanger is effectively number two to Courbage.

Following its closure of the first European CMBS in almost four years, Deutsche Bank has plans for three more CMBS transactions in the coming months, including a multi-loan, multi-borrower UK transaction, a German multi-family deal, and a repackaged securitisation of €225m worth of CMBS bonds which are due for maturity.

According to this month’s Real Estate Capital, the UK loans lined up for its next UK CMBS include one on the Merry Hill regional shopping centre in the West Midlands, the Design Centre in Chelsea Harbour in London and Milton Park, a business park in Oxfordshire.

Deustche Bank and Goldman Sachs are both vying to provide the financing behind Blackstone's recently bought £550m Mint hotel portfolio, which has been sold by agent JP Morgan Cazenoze under the instruction of the previous owner City Inn Limited's bank, Lloyds Banking Group.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

jwallace@costar.co.uk

http://www.costar.co.uk/en/assets/news/2011/August/Goldman-poaches-Deutsche-Banks-director-Fabrizio-Grena-/