Hatfield Philips’ debt advisory business arranges first deals

Hatfield Philips International’s debt advisory team has arranged its first loan facility, on behalf of parent company Starwood Capital.

The HPI team, led by Rupert Gill, arranged a €6.1m facility for an investor’s purchase of a residential and retail property portfolio from NAMA. The loan was made for listed debt fund Starwood European Real Estate Finance (SEREF) and was the fund’s maiden financing in the Irish market.

HPI’s debt advisory and transaction management platform was set up by the European loan servicing firm earlier this year after Gill joined from Lloyds, to originate and structure loans for lenders. It is mandated by SEREF to execute loans of between €5-20m, smaller than the €20-500m facilities which Starwood itself would usually provide.

Besides SEREF, Gill’s team currently works for two other lenders with different risk-return profiles.

HPI is understood to have a further two deals in the pipeline which it expects to close by the end of September – another in Ireland and one in Italy.

Rupert Gill said: “This line of business is gaining significant traction. Through the HPI/LNR infrastructure we are able to originate and structure transactions as well as execute and service loans on behalf of our clients, allowing them to add scale to their current operations and quickly and efficiently deploy capital.

“Few institutions offer this full range of flexible services; even fewer have such broad exposure to Europe’s leading commercial real estate markets.”

In its first half 2015 results last week, SEREF reported that the fund made two new loans in the period, the Irish loan arranged by HPI and a DKK350.3m (£33.1m) facility secured on an industrial portfolio in Denmark – its first entry into the Danish market.

The fund invested all its original equity and its recent activity has been made possible by the raising of an extra £24m and an £8m drawdown from its revolving credit facility.