Grant Frankel, Ken Ziebelman, Philip McKnight and Robert Turner
Managing Directors at Eastdil Secured
Last year's rank: 17
The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were an unnerving time for most, and Eastdil’s Ken Ziebelman was no exception.
“When things hit that second week of March, we were pretty concerned about how paralyzed the market could get,” he recalled. “Those were certainly a challenging couple of months.”
Ziebelman and his colleagues never paused activity, though, spending the first months of the pandemic working through a number of closings agreed to pre-COVID, and then shifting back to new deals as liquidity returned to the system. Meanwhile, the company’s long history in the note sale space gave it the credibility to price and execute multiple loan sales as the pandemic impacted lenders.
Liquidity returned to the system more quickly than expected, Grant Frankel said.
“I think we were all surprised at how quickly the [market] snapped back,” he said. “The weight of capital was enough to sort of push the market back after sitting on the sidelines sort of through the summer last year.”
The debt fund market was the first to come back, said Robert Turner, adding that CMBS had also been strong and that life insurance firms were actively lending throughout the pandemic, though in a highly selective fashion. Traditional bank lending has lagged but shown signs of returning to form in recent weeks, he said.
Eastdil notched total originations of $34.5 billion last year, with the New York team posting $6.8 billion. The firm’s 2020 deals included $323 million in acquisition financing for Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management’s purchase of Silvercup Studios; a $400 million refinancing for Fisher Brothers and J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s 1.1 million-square-foot office tower at 605 Third Avenue; $1.34 billion in refinancing for Exeter Property Group’s national industrial portfolio; and a $155 million predevelopment loan for the Innovo Group’s five-story industrial complex at 23-30 Borden Avenue in Long Island City.
Looking ahead, the firm is seeing an uptick in activity on the hospitality and retail sides. Loan sales will continue, but likely on an asset-specific basis, Frankel said. “You’re not going to see a huge deluge of lenders dumping mortgages, especially with how quickly the market has recovered.”
Eastdil has also been working to diversify its pipeline of talent, particularly in revenue-generating roles. Its 2020 summer intern class was around 60 percent non-white/non-male, and it expects to hit a similar mark for its 2021 class. The firm has also engaged an outside diversity, equity and inclusion partner to improve its recruitment.—A.B.
