With the U.S. and European markets reeling because of the debt crisis, European banks are under tremendous pressure to sell trillions of dollars in real estate loans over the next year. In addition, European property owners -- similar to owners in the United States -"´ now have a tremendous opportunity to buy their loans back at a discount, provided they have the capital to do so.
In response to the debt crisis, The Carlton Group, one of the world´s most successful real estate investment advisory firms, which has completed over $80 billion in real estate debt and equity transactions, has just launched a new global equity exchange website that will provide investors with instant access to equity and debt capital as well as a central market place to review distressed loans, which financial institutions want to sell.
A first-look at this new exchange can be seen at www.carltonexchange.com. The Carlton Exchange ("CEX") already has over $2 billion of listings and the firm´s Chairman, Howard L. Michaels, is projecting more than $10 billion of transaction flow over the next few months.
Carlton, which is well-known for orchestrating some of the largest real estate transactions in the U.S. and overseas, is currently executing more than $2 billion of international transactions throughout Moscow, London, Paris, Italy, New Delhi, India, Ireland and Croatia, to name several of the locations where these assets are located. Few investment firms, if any, are handling this volume of business.
The Carlton Group, which has offices in London, Athens and Manhattan, is renowned for raising billions of dollars of capital. Executives from Carlton have completed many large European transactions, including the Savoy Hotel and the Claridges Hotel in London, the CIGA Hotel Group portfolio throughout Europe and the relatively recent 5,000 unit apartment portfolio acquisition in Berlin.
Now, Carlton has raised the bar with CEX, which will provide a central market place for buyers and sellers to meet to transact business. Moreover, Carlton excels at running a competitive process, which will give borrowers and financial institutions comfort that they are getting a true market transaction and the best pricing.
"The CEX web platform has been built on the most powerful and popular commercial real estate listing engine in the world, enabling buyers to receive benefits they previously never had," Michaels says. "What CEX does is create efficiency, transparency and access to capital in a marketplace which has none of these features."
For additional information on our European platform, please contact Howard L. Michaels, Michael J. Campbell or Jason Algaze.
The Carlton Group is an international real estate investment banking firm with offices throughout the United States, London and Greece. Founded in 1991, Carlton has consummated in excess of $80 billion in transactions.
