Barings closes on $93m acquisition of ACRE Capital

Barings Real Estate Advisers (formerly Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers) has closed on its purchase of the mortgage banking subsidiary of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, ACRE Capital, for $93 million.

Along with the purchase, first agreed upon in June, Barings acquires ACRE’s existing staff and has renamed the group Barings Multifamily Capital.

Primarily engaged in agency lending at ARES, the newly acquired platform is one of 19 lenders that hold licenses with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

Under the Barings Multifamily Capital name, the group will continue to originate and service multifamily, senior housing and healthcare facility loans through these government-sponsored entities.

“The array of capital solutions that we can provide within the multifamily and healthcare sectors positions us very well to allocate capital up and down the capital stack and grow the coverage and expertise in an important property sector for Barings Real Estate Advisers,” said Scott Brown, global head of real estate at Barings, in a statement.

Jamie Henderson, head of structured real estate investments, who will head the new group, added that the firm has “a bullish stance regarding the real estate fundamentals of both the multifamily and healthcare sectors.”

A member of the MassMutual Financial Group, Barings has a $275 billion global presence with over 600 investment professionals and offices in 17 countries, according to the statement. Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, a REIT, is externally managed by a subsidiary of Ares Management, a publicly traded global alternative asset manager with approximately $95 billion of assets under management.

“With a backdrop of strong market fundamentals and an active transaction environment, we expect to redeploy our available capital in a diverse set of principal loans across the capital structure with attractive risk adjusted return opportunities,” said John Jardine, president and co-CEO at Ares, in a separate statement.