Quadrant founding member Michael Wood resigns

Quadrant Real Estate Advisors’ head of operations in Australia and one of its founding members has resigned, Real Estate Capital has learned.

Michael Wood left his executive vice-president role at the debt fund manager on Friday after serving 10 years running the US-based firm’s Sydney office, where he was responsible for origination, product development and capital raising.

He described his departure as amicable and his decade at Quadrant as “a fantastic journey.”

“But it comes with a lot of commitment to global travel, which is great when you’re in a certain part of your career but not so good when you’re in another part of your career,” he told Real Estate Capital.

Wood oversaw Quadrant’s deployment of more than $250 million worth of loans in the Australian market and helped raised over $1 billion for the firm to invest globally.

He said he planned to take a break before rejoining the growing real estate debt sector in Australia.

“Real estate credit has become, if not quite a mainstream asset class then certainly acknowledged as an emerging asset class,” Wood said. “While I don’t have any immediate plans as to what that might mean for me in the future, it’s clearly where my expertise lies and where I’ll focus my energies at the appropriate time.”

Kurt Wright, CEO and also a founding member at Quadrant, confirmed that Wood had left on good terms. “We remain fully committed to the Australian market,” he added.

Australia’s A$232 billion commercial property mortgage market has attracted the attention of some of the world’s largest insurers eager to deploy longer tenor loans as regulatory requirements force banks to become more conservative lenders.

Quadrant’s most common product in Australia has been senior stretch loans for mature income producing assets as well as value added and development opportunities. However, debt opportunities in Australia have been few and far between compared to Europe.

Headquartered in Atlanta, the firm has more than doubled its assets to US$6.4 billion since it started investing in 2006. In November, it teamed up with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund to invest up to €50 million each in office development projects in a push to deploy more capital in Europe.

In December, it provided a ‎£51.24 million six-year acquisition loan to Newworth Holdings Limited, an affiliate of Alfred Equities, on 1 Alie Street in Central London.

The firm’s client base largely consists of Australian superannuation and other pension funds as well as insurers making long-term loans on US assets.