ABS Partners, Altman Warwick Launch Capital Markets Arm

The joint venture, which will offer commercial mortgage brokerage and advisory services and complements ABS’ leasing and investment sales businesses. The joint venture has already closed numerous financings, Brian Warwick, a principal at Altman Warwick, told CO.

Those financings include a $100 million permanent loan for 915 Broadway, a 20-story office building in Midtown South with Metlife and $26 million in financing for two commercial co-op units, one each at 222 Park Avenue South and 547 Broadway with People’s United Bank.

 The two firms aren’t strangers to each other, having transacted several times together over the years beginning in 2011, Warwick said. “There are a lot of common core values between the two firms, and we work very well together,” he said.

“The benefits of the joint venture are twofold,” said Robert Altman, a principal at Altman Warwick. “It creates a new vehicle for ABS Partners to provide additional services to its existing business relationships and, more importantly, it provides value to its clients that is 100 percent complementary and synergistic to ABS’ existing business lines.  We all firmly believe that the more real estate solutions that any service company can offer, the more useful a resource that firm becomes to its clients.”

Altman and Warwick will maintain their boutique brokerage’s Long Island headquarters but be primarily focused on the new joint venture, they told CO, setting up its home in ABS’ offices at 200 Park Avenue South.

While ABS Altman Warwick’s focus will be New York-centric, the platform will have a national reach, said Gregg Schenker, the president of ABS Partners. Indeed, ABS Altman Warwick recently closed a $15 million floating-rate loan for a Kenton Circle, a Class A office property located in Charlotte, N.C.

“When we worked on financing transactions together the Altman Warwick team proved to be very capable, and that capability intrigued us,” Schenker said. “As the relationship evolved it made sense to both parties to have an affiliation that was more solidified and a more permanent business arrangement, which is the joint venture we’ve now formed. It gives ABS the ability to have all of the capabilities that come with a capital markets platform in-house.”

Steven Hornstock, a co-managing partner at ABS and the director of investment sales at the firm, said that the new division complements ABS’ investment sales business nicely. “ABS is a very entrepreneurial brokerage shop. So, for the most part, as a broker, we’re not pigeon-holed to doing office leasing in Midtown South. But now we have new capabilities. And when an investment sales broker is working on a project where there’s a financing aspect, we have that resource in-house.”

Now the business is up and running, ABS Altman Warwick is actively looking to grow the team and hire “a handful” of experienced commercial mortgage brokers, Warwick said.