Cohen Financial Forms National Equity Placement Practice

Chicago—Cohen Financial, a national real estate capital services firm, announced that it has formed a national equity practice to expand its current capital markets financing capabilities. The equity placement practice will primarily focus on direct limited partnership participations. Cohen Financial recently formed an affiliation with Artis Advisors LLC, an investment banking firm, to co-market equity placement services.

Kevin O’Grady, senior managing director of Cohen Financial in the firm’s Miami office, will lead the equity placement practice. The practice will place programmatic and discretionary equity from its sources of family offices, private equity firms, opportunity funds and institutional capital providers and offer investment strategy advice for opportunities ranging from $50 million to $350 million. In 2011, Cohen Financial completed $400 million in equity placement projects and expects the practice to multiply its assignments in 2012.

Recently, the firm hired three new equity placement professionals in its Los Angeles office: John M. Carrick, ESQ., Robert L. Lindner and Matthew Jensen. The equity placement practice works with privately owned commercial real estate (CRE) property investment companies with large expansion programs for value-add properties.

Carrick brings more than 20 years of experience as an attorney and investment banker with a specific knowledge of real estate and financial markets. He has executed real estate transactions totaling more than $75 billion. For 10 years, Carrick managed the structured financed group for Los Angeles based Studley Inc. Previously, he was a senior attorney in the Real Estate Capital Markets practice of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and held several significant positions, including Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Finance at Capital America (formerly Nomura Asset Capital) and Director of Real Estate Capital Markets for Andersen Global Corporate Finance, the investment bank affiliate of Arthur Andersen.

Lindner brings more than 12 years of experience in the real estate industry and consulting industries. Previously, he was the associate director of Structured Finance and Equity Capital Markets for Studley Inc., where he provided a full range of financial and capital market advisory services for developers and operators of real estate. Prior to Studley, Lindner was a senior associate within the principal investments and structured finance disciplines at Buchanan Street Partners involved in numerous debt and equity placements across a number of real estate product types.

Jensen brings more than 10 years of commercial real estate investment experience, working across various product types and with entities and assets located in a wide variety of markets. He has provided real estate advice and services to the executives and principals of many distinguished private companies. Previously, he was a co-founding principal of SIG Equity Partners responsible for the creation of strategic partnerships, as well as, leading the real estate consulting and equity placement. Prior to SIG, Jensen’s worked with large national home builders and as a consultant for Los Angeles-based investors.