My Gift To WSO: Investment Committee Memos....Or Something Like That

So, I've been trying to find an actual Investment Committee Memo from a real deal. I randomly asked for one on an existing thread on this board and someone told me it was too "proprietary" for anyone to share. Fair enough.

So I took to the magical, wonderful Google!

Started out with: investment memo filetype:pdf - I got some good stuff, but nothing earth shattering.

I tried a bunch of combinations and kept getting roughly the same stuff. It was usually an investment memo to a pension fund from an investment consultant, (Townsend Group seems to be popular) recommending an investment manager - Blackstone, Apollo, etc. So I get to see the pension funds meeting minutes, the memo from the investment consultant recommending the investment manager and then the pitch from the investment manager. Great! Good, good, stuff. I scanned through one where Apollo said they get deals from property owners who used the "wrong advisors". Wow. Very eye opening for me as a wanna be dealmaker.

Happy but not satisfied, I kept adding keywords until I got to this: real estate private equity investment committee memo apartments filetype:pdf

All I can say is that my two days of research has paid off. It literally feels like God has rewarded me for the effort and even trying.

I found a package from a developer trying to raise capital from a pension fund with pro formas, renderings, layouts, market analysis, the entire enchilada....... with pico de gallo, guacamole and sour cream!

What is the pièce de résistance you ask? I found a $99m equity book from a huge broker with the deal teams contacts including CELL NUMBERS!

Finding this.......I feel like I'm finally gonna make my mother proud!

I hope it does for you what it did for me! Enjoy!

 

Would love to hear from the debt folks on your investment memos. Maybe the equity side's memos are a lot more comprehensive and contains a lot of original thought and analysis. But, does anybody here on the debt side feel like their memos are basically copy pasting the appraisals, ESA and PCA's? Our analysts and associates spend 70-80% of their time writing these memos for the various deals they are working on. The strengths and weaknesses part of this memo are basically recycled from previous deals, Seriously, I am not kidding, looks like for every deal, its the same strengths- strong and experienced sponsor, diversified granular rent roll, strong market, strong credit metrics etc. The mitigants are also the same. Then for the market summary- you use some data from costar or reiss, but you can copy and paste stuff from the appraisal. Then you summarize the appraisal and other third party reports- ESA and PCA. Then a few sentences on the borrowing entity. You also then summarize the rent and sale comps again from the appraisal. So, basically very little original thought here as all the info is already prepared for you. Your just putting them all together. And the best part of this is the borrower pays for all the third party reports here lol. Even the cash flow and underwriting models your preparing, is basically plug and chug once you have models/templates from the 100's of previous deals you have done. Does anyone else here feel like none of this is rocket science? Now to be fair, what we do is predominantly stabilized assets, no ground up development. I am guessing there will be undoubtedly more creativity and analysis on new development.

 
Most Helpful

We do initial memos and then final memos. Initial memos are usually around 20 pages long and while some of it is market color, because third parties aren't in yet, all of the valuation, comps, etc. are all from my own research.

Final memos are between 35 and 50 pages long and include third party report data, but at least in our memos you don't just copy and paste stuff, you have to seriously analyze everything, explain the differences and then write why you still feel like it is a good deal.

If all your analysts are doing is copying and pasting, then they are doing their firm and themselves a disservice by not actually analyzing/learning anything.

 

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