CoStar Exclusive: Chenavari poaches Etesian trio for debt venture
By James Wallace - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 9:30
London-based hedge fund Chenavari Investment Managers has poached Andrew Haines, Sam Mellor and Duncan Elley from Etesian Capital Partners to expand their activities in real estate debt investment and advisory.
Haines, Mellor and Elley, who joined this week, have worked together for seven years, including a stint at Capmark, since rebranded Capita Asset Services, before setting up Etesian Capital Partners in 2008.
They subsequently entered into partnership with property company Levanter. Together the team have sourced and executed more than €5bn of transactions.
At Chenavari, Haines and Mellor, who join as partners, and Elley, who joins as a director, will be responsible for sourcing and investing in real estate debt, including CMBS bonds as well as mezzanine and preferred equity positions throughout Europe.
Chenavari, headquartered at 1 Grosvenor Place (pictured above), already has committed capital of $1.8bn, with the team’s target to invest around $350m in year one. The team has already closed its first investment: the purchase of a €7m mezzanine loan secured by retail and multi-family commercial real estate in Germany.
Haines, Mellor and Elley built up a portfolio of debt restructuring and raising mandates at Etesian, including acting as debt advisor on Edinburgh House Estates’ €500m German loan portfolio, for which the team has retained the brief.
In a joint statement, Haines and Mellor, said: “Chenavari’s reputation and success will provide an extremely strong platform to enable us to continue to invest in real estate transactions alongside the many property companies and partners we have worked closely with over the last 15 years. The ability to make significant investments across the capital structure without arbitrarily restrictive criteria allows us to add scale to the successful investment strategy we have been running previously.”
Loic Fery, managing partner at Chenavari said: “Our investment philosophy is to be focused on complex credit market opportunities where specific asset collateral expertise allows to generate a specific alpha. Beefing up our capabilities in real estate debt investment is a logical and complementary step in the continuation of our existing activities in European structured finance.”
Frederic Couderc, managing director of Chenavari, added: “We are pleased to welcome Andrew, Sam and Duncan as senior members of the Chenavari investment teams. We intend to deploy significant capital in the real estate space as we see it offering an attractive risk/return profile."
Chenavari set-up in London in 2008, and now has more than 40 staff with expertise in corporate, high yield and structured finance debt markets. Chenavari’s Toro 1A fund – which invests in European RMBS, CMBS, CDOs and balance sheet CLOs – has delivered a return of 27.8% over the first six months of 2011 and 338.7% since the fund was launched just over two years ago in June 2009.
jwallace@costar.co.uk