Real Estate Capital has announced the winners of its inaugural annual awards, recognising the best deals and the top lenders and borrowers active in real estate finance in Europe and the US.
Amongst the big winners were Bank of America Merill Lynch, Blackstone, DRC Capital and Wells Fargo all of which won at least two awards, with Deutsche Bank scooping three.
The borrowers recognised for their innovative and effective finance teams include UK REIT Great Portland Estates, CBRE Global Investors, and the team developing London’s Battersea Power Station site.
Altogether there were 14 different winners across 20 categories with thousands of votes cast.
Click here to find out all the winners and runners up, and to read profiles of each of our winners, at: Real Estate Capital Awards 2014.
Deutsche Bank outdid its competitors by scooping three awards, being voted pan-European lender of the year and the CMBS lender of the year in both Europe and the US.
In Europe its deals included the €1.5bn refinancing of distressed German property company IVG which included a €680m securitisation. Its European CMBS deals also included the €355m Deco 2014 Gondola, which was secured by Italian collateral owned by Blackstone, and the €250m Deco 2014 Tulip, the first post-crisis Dutch CMBS.
In the US it completed $23.5bn of CMBS deals. These included the $1.4bn securitisation of debt held against the Kyo-ya portfolio of hotels in Hawaii and San Francisco.
BAML took the European financing of the year award for its complex and speedy €935m refinancing of Lone Star’s Coeur Défense office complex in Paris. The bank picked up the same award on the other side of the Atlantic for its $1.25bn refinancing of Hudson Bay Company’s Saks on Fifth Avenue in New York which involved it bringing Bank of Nova Scotia, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into a club deal.
Lone Star’s Coeur Défense acquisition was pushed into second place in the NPL acquisition of the year award, with more votes cast for Blackstone which landed Project Hercules, the €6.4bn book of distressed Spanish loans sold by Catalunya Banc.
Several of the other categories were also extremely closely fought, including debt adviser of the year, which was a face off between Eastdil  and CBRE. Eastdil emerged on top in Europe, while CBRE was voted the top firm in the US.
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