David Nass
Managing director and head of real estate finance at UBS
Last year's rank: 38
UBS’s David Nass approached CRE’s challenging lending environment with an eye toward diversification.
In a year that saw total originations of $3.2 billion for the platform, its $920 million balance sheet portfolio featured a blend of 40.8 percent office, 35.9 percent retail, and 22 percent industrial.
“We used to be solely reliant on CMBS revenue,” said Nass. “CMBS is still a very big part of our business, but so is CRE warehouse lending, special situations lending, balance sheet lending and our advisory business. We’ve built out a lot of different avenues over the last several years to take advantage of a constantly changing interest rate and credit environment.”
The company’s notable transactions last year included a $625 million commitment and subsequent $125 million bridge financing package in support of a client’s acquisition of a research and development campus in a sale-leaseback transaction; the co-origination and securitization of a pari-passu portion of a $274 million office loan in New York City; and a $250 million bridge loan in support of the refinancing of a vacant five-building office campus in Silicon Valley.
Nass — working without longtime originations head Chris LaBianca, who decamped for Natixis this year — notes that despite the office sector’s troubles, there are still worthwhile opportunities for those willing to look — and willing to take a certain amount of risk.
“We put a loan out to essentially vacant office,” said Nass about the Silicon Valley loan. “It’s a highly structured loan to an institutional-type sponsor, and it’s an example of us taking the appropriate amount of risk in a scrutinized asset class and not shying away from an opportunity to provide financing to an important client of the firm.”
Nass sees this firm-wide perspective as the one that will guide UBS toward another profitable year in 2024.
“Clients are looking at UBS as a creative financial solution business,” said Nass, “where we can think outside the box and structure loans that are appropriate and fair, and that reflect the market environment we’re in today.”
