News from The Real Estate Center

The Real Estate Center hosted a half-day conference on May 28 that explored financial recovery in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, government intervention and other seismic shifts that have recently rocked the real estate industry.

Titled "On the Road to Financial Recovery: Navigating Today's Real Estate Capital Markets," the event was held from 8:30 a.m. to noon at the Chicago Cultural Center. More than 130 real estate professionals attended this relevant event.

The program featured three panel discussions:

Government Intervention in Real Estate Finance

Panelists

Jonathan C. Black, partner in DLA Piper's Corporate and Finance group, based in Boston. He focuses his practice on structured finance, securitized lending, mergers and acquisitions and structured real estate transactions. He has developed a significant practice identifying and analyzing restructuring opportunities resulting from the collapse of the capital markets, guiding clients in identifying and carrying out arbitrage and repackaging strategies.

Ronald S. Borod,partner in DLA Piper's Corporate and Finance group. He has worked extensively in securitization and structured finance for almost two decades and established a reputation as a thought leader in the creation of innovative structures and financial products. Mr. Borod focuses his practice on the development and implementation of new structures for securitization programs and helping clients capture new value from distressed assets in the capital markets.

rodgers

Clifton E. (Chip) Rodgers, Jr., Senior Vice President The Real Estate Roundtable has been at the center of every major piece of financial services legislation and regulatory action for over a decade, successfully representing real estate's stake in the national policy arena on financial services issues. In addition to his work in federal government relations on national policy matters pertaining to credit, capital market and risk management issues, Rodgers has 15 years of experience in capital market, real estate investment banking, work-outs and debt restructuring activities at Mellon Bank, Fannie Mae, The First Boston Corporation, Phillips Realty Capital, a Goldman, Sachs & Co venture with the J.E. Robert Companies (now known as the Archon Group), and Legg Mason.

Moderator

Thomas P. FitzGibbon, Jr., Executive Vice President of the $8.3 billion Chicago-based MB Financial Bank (NASDAQ: MBFI) the 92nd largest bank in the US. He served as the Chief Retail Banking Officer from 1999-2007. This responsibility included oversight of 70 branches and all other retail delivery platforms including residential mortgage, consumer and small business lending programs. He is a member of the bank's board of directors and a member of the Management Committee for the bank. He continues to serve as the President of MB Financial Community Development Corporation, President of the MB Charitable Foundation and Treasurer of both thefederal and state Political Action Committees of the holding company.

The Many Faces of Foreclosure: a current update on the state of foreclosure activity

Panelists

John G. (Jack) Markowski, President of Community Investment Corporation (CIC), oversees the most important source of loans for the rehabilitation of multifamily residential buildings in the Chicago region. Capitalized by investments from 50 financial institutions, since 1984, CIC has made almost $1 billion in loans for the acquisition and rehabilitation of almost 1,500 buildings with 40,000 units.

Markowski served as Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Housing from 1999 through June 2007. During his tenure, the Department spent more than $3 billion to assist more than 100,000 housing units in Chicago, including more than 5,200 SRO units, 5,700 units for senior housing, and 2,000 new single family homes. In addition to overseeing the administration of Low Income Housing Tax Credits and the country's largest locally funded rental subsidy program, Markowski dramatically increased the Department's use of tax-exempt bonds and Tax Increment Financing.

Robert M. White, Jr., CRE, is the founder and president of Real Capital Analytics Inc., an international research firm that publishes the Capital Trends Monthly. Real Capital Analytics provides real time data concerning the capital markets for commercial real estate and the values of commercial properties. The firm maintains offices in New York City, San Jose (CA), The Hague and London. It has about 800 clients, including the industry's leading brokerage firms, institutional advisors, REITs, developers, foreign investors and banks.

Mr. White is a noted authority on the real estate capital markets with credits in the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, The Economist, Forbes, New York Times, Financial Times, among others. In addition, he was named one of National Real Estate Investor Magazine's "Ten to Watch" in 2005, Institutional Investor's "20 Rising Stars of Real Estate" in 2006, and Real Estate Forum's "10 CEOs to Watch" in 2007.

Moderator

Rebel Cole, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in The Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul . He teaches MBA-level courses in financial management and corporate governance. During his career, he has taught finance in five different countries.

Dr. Cole's career includes ten years working in the Federal Reserve System, primarily at the Board of Governors in Washington, DC. Since 1998, Dr. Cole has served as a special advisor to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, advising Central Banks in developing countries that include the Bahamas, China, Jamaica, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Palestine, the Philippines, Russia and Yemen.

Addressing Commercial Real Estate Financing in the Current Environment

Panelists

David R. Maki, Head of Americas Capital Markets - RREEF
Mr. Maki has over 18 years of experience in debt capital markets and joined RREEF as the Head of Capital Markets in July 2005. In this capacity, Mr. Maki oversees the activities of the RREEF capital markets team, which include placement of all property and portfolio-level financing, as well as implementation of hedging strategies. RREEF is the alternative investment management division of Deutsche Asset Management, a member of the Deutsche Bank Group, and has more than $60 billion of assets under management globally. RREEF Americas oversees assets valued in excess of $25 billion, and the Capital Markets group has sourced more than $10 billion of debt for its client, including private bond placements, unsecured lines of credit, fixed rate property financing, portfolio and single-asset securitizations, construction and development financing, and bridge facilities.

Michael Svets, Midwest Division Manager Real Estate Banking Group, Wells Fargo. Mr. Svets has over sixteen years of experience in commercial banking and commercial real estate. He joined the Wells Fargo Real Estate Merchant Banking Group in 1999, where he was a relationship manager in the Dallas office and was responsible for managing a $500 million commercial real estate portfolio. The loan structures included non-recourse, participating mezzanine, as well as traditional senior construction loans. In 2007, he assumed the office manager role in the Chicago office of the Real Estate Merchant Banking Group. In 2009, the role was expanded to include a portfolio of over $3 billion.

Moderator

Charles H. Wurtzebach, Ph.D., George L. Ruff Visiting Professor in Real Estate Studies, Department of Real Estate, De Paul University. Mr. Wurtzebach joined the faculty at DePaul University in 2009. In that capacity he lectures at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, participates in joint research projects with other faculty, and provides support to the De Paul Real Estate Center. He was most recently Managing Director and Property CIO of Henderson Global Investors (North America) Inc., where he was responsible for the strategic portfolio planning and the overall management of Henderson's North American business. A frequent featured speaker at professional and academic gatherings, he was the 1994 recipient of the prestigious Graaskamp Award for Research Excellence presented by the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) and is a member of the American Real Estate Society and a past President and Director of the Real Estate Research Institute.

To view the PowerPoint Presentations, please click here.