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. The Firm also has extensive experience in the formation, fund-raising and ongoing representation of Real Estate Investment Funds operating domestically and internationally. Significant representations have included:

• Debt restructurings: Apollo Global Real Estate as one of the lead mezzanine debt holders in the Hilton Worldwide $20 billion debt restructuring; Goldman Sachs as holder of the junior debt on the Planet Hollywood casino in Las Vegas in attempting to workout and eventually disposing of that debt; and the Mara and Tisch families, owners of the New York Giants NFL Franchise, in successfully completing a series of transactions to refinance a portion of the existing debt on their $1.6 billion joint venture stadium development project in the Meadowlands Sports Complex.
• Acquisitions, sales, strategic investments and other corporate transactions: Pershing Square Capital Management and Fairholme Funds in their combined $3.8 billion investment in the reorganization plan of General Growth Properties – allowing GGP to emerge from the largest real estate bankruptcy in U.S. history; Vornado Realty Trust in its purchase, with Geyser Holdings, of the Borgata Hotel land from MGM Resorts International; Apollo Global Real Estate on its acquisition of Citi Property Investors, the real estate fund unit of Citigroup; and the Whitehall Funds in connection with various sales, including the sale of 417 Fifth Avenue to Inmobiliaria Carso S.A.
  
• Distressed debt acquisitions: Pershing Square Capital Management in its acquisition of the senior mezzanine debt on Stuyvesant Town; CIM Group in the purchase of the distressed loan on the Drake Hotel site on Park Avenue in New York and in its acquisition of the junior debt on a major condominium development in Manhattan; and Vornado Realty Trust in numerous contemplated and completed mezzanine loan acquisitions and restructurings, including loans secured indirectly by Hotel Roosevelt, 757 Third Avenue and 280 Park Avenue, each located in New York City.
  
• Issuers and underwriters in significant equity and debt offerings by a number of real estate investment trusts (REITs), including HCP, Sunstone Hotel Investors, Vornado Realty Trust, Glimcher Realty Trust, Verde Realty and Regency Centers Corporation.