Greystone’s Eliav Dan Forms New Firm, Cap Pointe Advisors

Four years after joining Greystone from Barclays to expand the lender’s West Coast and large loan business, Eliav Dan has branched out on his own and opened a new shop — but one focused on advisory, not lending.  

The veteran lender has formed Cap Pointe Advisors, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment banking and capital advisory firm with plans to open additional offices in New York and Miami. Dan, who was Barclays’ West Coast head from 2015 to 2021, will facilitate various lending offerings including senior debt, mezzanine loans, preferred equity, joint venture equity and recapitalizations.

“I’ve always had that entrepreneurial mindset within the institutional box, and I think this is my time,” said Dan, who had contemplated forming his own shop in recent years. “I want us to be recognized as an institutional-quality advisory shop that has the capability to do large deals, north of $100 million, but where it’s extraordinarily relationship-focused with its clients and is not transactional in nature.” 

Dan begins the new chapter in his commercial real estate career with more than $10 billion in financings on his resume following previous roles at Greystone, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Ladder Capital and Merrill Lynch. At Greystone, Dan focused on structured large loan originations, commercial mortgage-backed securities, balance sheet lending and agency debt. 

Since launching Cap Pointe in mid-July, Dan has forged correspondent and subservicing agreements with a number of investment banks and established agency lending relationships to enable loans backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and and the Federal Housing Administration. Dan, who also established Morgan Stanley’s West Coast CMBS lending operation in the early 2000s, is well versed in a variety of lending platforms — which he thinks will play well in the current higher interest rate climate. 

“I don’t want to be wed to any particular product type,” said Dan, who formed brokerage firm Verone Capital Markets in 2009 after leaving Morgan Stanley during the Global Financial Crisis. “You have to be able to pivot, and you have to be able to offer clients creative structures.” 

Cap Pointe is strong out of the gate with a pipeline of more than $1 billion in deals and is actively engaged as an adviser on  nearly $400 million in transactions. Dan said the many close relationships he forged with clients are paying dividends in enabling strong volume early in the firm’s history.

Dan has assembled a few former Barclays colleagues in Los Angeles and New York for the first two months of the company. He hopes to open a dedicated  New York office by the end of the year and also have a Miami team in early 2026. 

In terms of other advisory firms Dan wants to model Cap Pointe after, he points to Lotus Capital Partners, which was founded by Faisal Ashraf in 2016, given its ability to execute large-profile deals largely under the radar. He said the ultimate goal is not to transform Cap Pointe into one of the big brokerage shops.

“That is not my aspiration to become a manager of a massive company,” Dan said. “I want to manage a tight origination team of ex-bankers that understand credit risk and understand how to structure, and then the rest will fall into place.”

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.