Bringing New Dimensions to Global Commercial Real Estate

Our Real Estate Group continues to occupy a unique leadership position in global commercial real estate. Our areas of expertise extend well beyond traditional real estate matters and include bankruptcy and creditors’ rights, corporate governance, financial institutions, M&A, private equity, securities, structured finance, professional sports-related transactions and complex restructuring of family-owned businesses and assets. Our most significant 2007 representations included:

• Whitehall Street Real Estate Funds (Whitehall) in numerous transactions including:
• the debt financings of 10 separate acquisitions by Whitehall affiliates of significant asset portfolios in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Italy and Poland;
• its US$ 2.2 billion acquisition of Equity Inns, Inc.; and
• the US$ 1.2 billion acquisition by a Whitehall affiliate of American Casino & Entertainment Properties from American Entertainment Properties Corp.
• Goldman Sachs Group, as the lead investor in an investor group that included MSD Capital, Mubadala Development Co. and The Olayan Group, in the nearly US$ 1.4 billion debt and equity investment in The Related Companies.
• The Mara and Tisch families, owners of the New York Giants National Football League franchise, in a series of transactions that paved the way for the commencement of construction of their US$ 1.6 billion joint-venture stadium development project in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Our Firm also represented the Mara and Tisch families and their stadium development company in connection with their US$ 800 million project financing. This financing represents the largest-ever stadium financing in the U.S., and was named “North American Leisure Deal of the Year 2007” by Project Finance.
• Vornado Realty Trust in several transactions including:
• the development of Pennsylvania Station, the Madison Square Garden site and related areas in the 34th Street corridor in midtown Manhattan;
• its US$ 1.61 billion SEC-registered offering of convertible debt and more than US$ 4.75 billion, in the aggregate, of other company and asset financings and refinancings; and
• its acquisition, for approximately US$ 2 billion, of all the shares of a group of non-U.S. companies that owns, through U.S. entities, a 70% controlling interest in the partnerships that own a two million square foot building at 1290 Avenue of the Americas in New York City and the 1.8 million square foot Bank of America Tower at 555 California Street in San Francisco.

We also remain one of the most active firms involved in the formation of private equity real estate funds. In 2007, we completed or began work on forming eight different funds with expected capital commitments of more than US$ 16.5 billion in total, including the Whitehall Global 2007 Fund, the GS Developing Markets Real Estate Fund, the CIM Infrastructure Fund, CIM Fund III, Westbridge Hospitality Fund II, an India fund, a fund that invests in Asia, and a fund that will invest in the U.S. and Japan.