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NewOak Hires Managing Director for Commercial Real Estate

NewOak Capital appointed Amy Levenson as managing director and chairman of its newly formed commercial real estate loans and properties capital markets group responsible for creating and executing real estate capital market solutions for clients.

Levenson has over twenty-five years of experience on Wall Street, mostly at Goldman Sachs and previously at Barclays Capital. At Goldman, she divided her time there between institutional bond trading and sales to the hedge fund and insurance industries. Her multi-decade relationships with the hedge fund community and experience as head bank note trader at Goldman enable NewOak Capital to offer coverage on both sides of the real estate asset trade. Additionally, Levenson's brief tenure as managing director at Grubb and Ellis has given her insight into integrating real estate and capital markets.

Under Levenson’s leadership, other members of the team include: Jon Fischer, a member of the Appraisal Institute and a career real estate professional who previously served as the director of corporate real estate for Prudential Insurance Co. and Farrah Lakhani, an associate director, who was recently at the private equity firm Lightyear Capital and formerly at Credit Suisse, where she focused on REITs and financial institutions.

NewOak’s commercial real estate loans and property capital markets group will offer one-stop structuring and execution solutions for firms looking to dispose or recapitalize real estate and related assets and loans. Members of the team have real estate capital markets and sales experience aside from real estate and securities licenses.

Asset types include REOs, CMBS, CLOs, CDOs, whole loans, mezzanine debt, and stable to busted individual properties or pools of properties. The team has relationships with hedge funds, private equity funds, banks, insurance companies, and REITs and has access to developers, MAI appraisers and construction consultants.

"Professionals who have worked with Amy know that her level of energy, integrity, and desire to help the clients is unmatched,” said Ron D'Vari, CEO and co-founder of NewOak Capital. “We are glad to have Amy lead our team of experts focusing on real estate capital markets solutions, a critical service demanded by the market and our clients," adds D’Vari.

“Amy will lead an important part of the NewOak Capital business as she and her team will help our clients transfer risk or identify investment opportunities," said James Frischling, president and co-founder of NewOak Capital. "We’re excited to be able to attract such talented professionals in Amy and her team to our platform and look forward to continuing to identify the needs of our clients and provide value-added services.” 

“We are very excited to have Amy and her team as we broaden our capital markets capabilities at NewOak Capital in the real estate space,” says Shad Quraishi, vice chairman and head of NewOak Capital’s business development. “Given the dislocation in the commercial real estate securitization and lending markets, we believe that this business represents one of the most significant opportunities to create liquidity by providing creative solutions.”

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