Does A Career Brokering/Forming JVs Even Exist?

Forgive me if this sounds stupid. Okay, so I'm going to start out by describing a job field and I'm trying to find out if it exists and what firms operate in the space:

  • This would functionally be a sales role, underwriting the performance/management of the real estate investors (equity fund, debt fund, GP) and presenting those opportunities to capital providers (sovereign wealth, family office, UHNW, pension funds, insurance companies) for partnership. Eventually, this person would be able to transition to the "buy side" of investment allocation at the capital provider.
  • On an individual deal basis, works either for the GP sponsor or the LP capital provider or for an intermediary matching the two in a JV equity agreement.
  • On a fund basis, works either for the capital provider or for the equity/debt fund, or works for the intermediary matching capital providers with different private equity/private debt funds in a JV agreement.
  • As far as I understand, this is different than the one-off debt/equity brokerage being done by JLL/CBRE/Colliers, etc.

Who works in this space, and what kind of experience do they require first? What is the best first role for a relational career such as this?

 

Yes, what you are describing on the intermediary side is essentially a Placement Agent. Many of the banks have groups that do this such as PJT Park Hill, Lazard Private Capital Advisory, Evercore Private Funds Group. There are also real estate specialists like JLL Securities or Park Madison Partners that will lean more heavily toward forming JV's and doing recapitalizations but also raise capital for funds. Most of the larger GPs perform this function internally through their Capital Raising/Investor Relations/Capital Markets team who are in the market raising capital for funds and setting up JVs (both single asset and programmatic). 

Best first role in this space is an Analyst at one of the placement agents. You will get a ton of great exposure working with a variety top-tier GP's and LP's. 

 
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There's a few different roles that cover what you're describing.

First is investment consultant - this is pretty common, you have consulting firms like Marsh McLennan that do this sort of stuff. You can find them if you go to any state pension site because they'll disclose publicly. Here is the link to the state employees retirement system of PA (https://sers.pa.gov/Investments.html). If you go down to investment manager evaluations list, there are PDFs titled 2022 Quarter 3 Real Estate Investment Manager Evaluation List. It seems on the RE side they use NEPC to evaluate REITS while on the investments side they use Callan. These guys just work with pensions to rate and evaluate funds and help make fund allocation decisions and generate billable hours in line with consulting.

Second is a placement agent - most investment banks like Eastdil, Jefferies, PJT Park Hill, Evercore, etc. will have private placement and fund raising teams to help raise capital for GPs or companies and will often be flexible around creating / marketing bespoke solutions that fit whatever mandate. Fees are probably higher here since they're many times a % of capital raised.

Third is a merchant bank - many investment banks will offer merchant banking services which is more or less like the above placement agent role, but they'll coinvest as well from their balance sheet or side vehicles they raise from investors or from employees. Sometimes they'll just directly invest. Depends on the situation. I've seen this more on the tech growth side, so I don't know which firms do this in the real estate space - but LionTree, Raine Group, Ducera, etc. are some examples of the structure.

 

In its simplest form, I'm a placement agent and GP advisory covering RE markets across the US and Europe.

I work with REPE funds and some managers to either: Raise capital for their funds/introduce JV partners that bring significant value/provide advisory on acquisitions and portfolio strategy. In the last 12 months specifically, the % share of my workload has massively shifted to the capital raising side as funds want to increase their next fund's size but the appetite from the majority of LPs has dipped so that's where I come in and find new capital then get a % of the capital placed. 

The route I took to get here was from JEF to a London based REPE fund covering their IR, then I left to set up my own shop about 5-6yrs ago in the US where I still am.

 

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