Kara McShane

Like a finely tuned machine, Kara McShane’s vertically integrated commercial real estate operation at Wells Fargo impresses one not so much for its astonishing production, but the sheer depth and breadth of its industry reach and market expertise. 

Organized across eight business lines around four core verticals  — lending, capital markets, community lending and investments, and commercial mortgage servicing — Wells Fargo Real Estate touches almost every aspect of CRE and did so again in 2023. 

The numbers speak for themselves: bookrunning $15.9 billion in global CMBS, $8.9 billion agency CMBS and $4.9 billion non-agency CMBS; $9.1 billion in balance sheet originations; $5.1 billion in agency originations; $3 billion in low-income housing tax credit originations; 21 percent market share in real estate loan syndications; and 15 percent market share in real estate investment banking.  

“2023 was our best year on record from a revenue perspective, and we made progress across all of our core strategic initiatives,” said McShane. “Admittedly, revenue performance benefited from an elevated interest rate environment, while the broader capital markets businesses — CMBS, loan syndications and agency lending — had a tougher year.”  

In 2023, as higher interest rates and a significant liquidity drain sucked the life out of investment sales, Wells Fargo played the hand it was dealt by turning its focus on acquisitions.  

Wells Fargo served as the sole structuring agent and the joint bookrunner on a $736 million single-asset, single-borrower CMBS offering secured by 19 hospitality properties owned by KSL Capital Partners. The bank originated the enormous mortgage together with a $204 million mezzanine loan that allowed KSL’s acquisition of Hersha Hospitality Trust to go through. Wells Fargo also served as financial adviser for Brookfield Infrastructure Partners on a $2.5 billion balance sheet bridge financing acquisition of Cyxtera and its 39 co-location data centers. 

“It’s no secret that lending activity was down, primarily driven by the unprecedented rise in base rates and subsequent fall of investment sale volume,” said McShane. “However, the market dislocation allowed some of our clients to capitalize on strategic acquisitions.”

Since taking over in 2020, McShane has ensured that her firm’s growing staff reflects the diversity of its customer base. To this end, the Wells Fargo CRE leadership team is 50 percent diverse (up from 10 percent four years ago), with 70 percent of those positions being in new positions. 

“First and foremost, we have a team with tremendous real estate expertise and experience,” said McShane. “We have an extremely broad array of product and service capabilities that exist in a singular line of business, which makes us unique in terms of how we are organized, and we feel that this is a competitive advantage.”