Real Estate Joint Ventures Forum

Andrew Charles has extensive experience in all aspects of commercial real estate law, including partnerships and joint ventures, financing for borrowers and lenders, acquisitions and sales, and development and leasing. His client base includes private equity funds, financial institutions, developers, and operators in the acquisition, financing, development, sale and leasing of all classes of commercial properties including office, hotel, multifamily, retail, public storage, mixed use and condominium properties. Andrew focuses mainly on structuring transactions for institutional investors and opportunity funds such as joint ventures, preferred equity investments, mezzanine financing and mixed debt/equity investments.

Robert Deckey is a Managing Director with Invesco Real Estate (IRE). In this role, he is responsible for executing IRE’s investment strategy in the East Coast, including industrial, apartments, office, affordable housing, manufactured housing, self storage, and retail. Since joining Invesco, he has completed $6.5 billion in investments, including ground up developments, value-add redevelopments, joint ventures and core. He is a member of the screening committee and investment strategy group. He also is a board member of Homestead Communities, a manufactured housing company based in San Francisco. Prior to joining IRE in 2016, Mr. Deckey was chief investment officer of George Comfort & Sons, Inc., where he was responsible for new acquisitions and capital markets, including a number of large distress office building investments, like Worldwide Plaza in NYC in 2009. Mr. Deckey also worked for over 10 years in real estate corporate finance at Citigroup and JP Morgan. He advised real estate investment trust clients on equity and debt raising, initial public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and asset sales. Before that, Mr. Deckey worked at AEW and EF Hutton in acquisitions and portfolio management. He has over 30 years of real estate experience. Mr. Deckey earned a bachelor of administration degree in electrical engineering and economics from Brown University, and an MBA in real estate finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the Real Estate Board of New York.

Mr. Raisner is the Founder and CEO of The Raisner Group (formerly Proteus Capital Management), a real estate private equity firm headquartered in New York City.

Initially, The Raisner Group purchased distressed apartment buildings auctioned off by banks. Since then, it has made instrumental contributions to the rebirth of Brooklyn.

Under his leadership, Proteus has raised capital domestically and internationally since 2009. It has been active in non-performing notes and fee simple transactions, and focuses primarily on value-add, residential and mixed-use real estate investments in New York City. Most of the firm’s acquisitions have taken place in the outer boroughs, with an emphasis in the emerging Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Starting 2013, The Raisner Group also became involved in PropTech, through its affiliate Raisner Tech Ventures, and made seed round investments in such startups as TheGuarantors, Enertiv, RealCrowd, LeasePilot, Nooklyn and PlotBox.

Prior to creating his company, Mr. Raisner worked as an equity trader for a hedge fund in New York and as a private equity investor in Argentina.

In conjunction to being an entrepreneur, Mr. Raisner has been a contributor to numerous international and domestic media outlets since 2011. His articles have been featured in publications including Forbes, Le Monde, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Observer and The Huffington Post (U.S., Canada, France, Italy and Mexico editions) and have been published by think tanks such as The Berggruen Institute, The World Economic Forum and The Urban Land Institute.

Mr. Raisner graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he wrote a thesis on the Economic Impact of Yugoslavia’s Political Evolution.

He holds a MBA from Columbia Business School with Dean’s List honors, and attended Universidad de San Andres in Buenos Aires. He is a CFA Chartherholder, a Foreign Trade Advisor to the Government of France and a Founding Member of the Transatlantic Forum of the French-American Foundation.

He is a frequent lecturer at universities and conferences, and is involved in various New York City organizations committed to ending homelessness and economically empowering lower-income communities.

He grew up in Paris and played professional basketball prior to his career in business.

Mr. Lewis is Chairman, President and Founder of Wharton Equity. Since its inception in 1987, he has overseen the expansion of the firm’s investment reach across different asset classes and strategies. As Chairman of the Real Estate Investment Committee, Mr. Lewis drives the direction of the firm as it executes its disciplined strategy of recognizing and capitalizing on emerging trends.

Among other initiative over the course of his leadership of Wharton Equity, Mr. Lewis established the firm’s industrial, multifamily, self-storage, homebuilding, hospitality and venture capital platforms resulting in $2.5 billion of transactions.

Mr. Lewis has had a diverse career having been employed in investment banking, commercial banking and tax accounting prior to forming Wharton Equity.  Besides his real estate activities, he is an active venture capital and private equity investor.  Mr. Lewis received his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his Master in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. He is a frequent guest lecturer in real estate, and is involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors.

Alex Schaefer is Vice President, Transactions for AXA Investment Managers. AXA-IM is part of AXA Group, the Paris-based multinational insurance firm.  AXA-IM is the largest real estate asset manager in Europe and one of the largest worldwide.  At AXA-IM, Alex focuses on investments across the risk spectrum and across property types in institutional markets throughout the country where AXA typically invests alongside proven, vertically-integrated sponsors.

Before AXA, Alex worked for TKF Real Estate Investment where he focused on value creating investments in office and mixed-use assets located in urban centers throughout the east coast.  Previously, he was Head of Acquisitions for ALTO Real Estate Funds, a NY based private equity fund that invested in value-add assets across the country alongside veteran local operating partners. Before ALTO, Alex was a Director of Acquisitions for VEREIT, a publicly-traded REIT that owned over 4,000 properties in 49 states. He found himself at VEREIT after working for American Realty Capital in various capacities before eventually transitioning over to a publicly-traded investment vehicle that was merged in to VEREIT. Alex graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in Accounting before working for Cushman & Wakefield.

Nicholas Baccile is a Director within the Real Estate Investment team at Canyon. Mr. Baccile joined Canyon in 2018 and primarily focuses on sourcing, underwriting, due diligence, structuring and executing debt and equity investments in the Northeast U.S. region. Prior to joining Canyon, Mr. Baccile worked at RXR Realty, where he was responsible for asset management of equity and debt investments. Previously, Mr. Baccile worked at Ares Management, where he was responsible for underwriting, due diligence and ongoing asset management of new equity investments. Mr. Baccile is a graduate of Cornell University (B.S., Applied Economics and Management with a minor in Real Estate).

Fred Cooper is Senior Vice President - Finance, International Development & Investor Relations at Toll Brothers (NYSE:TOL).  Toll, a Fortune 500 Company, is the 5th largest U.S. home builder by revenues, the 6th largest multifamily rental apartment developer, and among the largest land and community developers in the U.S. Toll is also one of the nation’s largest urban high-density/high-rise condo and rental tower developers with 50+ buildings and over 7,000 units completed.