Scott Dunlevie
Scott Dunlevie, 32
Director of CMBS and real estate finance at Citigroup
“Great Scott!” might have been what Citigroup’s CMBS and real estate finance team said in June 2013, because it had just hired a soon-to-be integral addition to the group: Scott Dunlevie.
The North Carolina native had taken an internship with UBS during college before joining Citi as part of a generalist program. The real estate finance group was his calling ultimately, though — thanks to its superstar, loyal team.
“I liked the fact that there was a very long tenure in the group,” Dunlevie said. “There was something that immediately just clicked for me. I’ve been at Citi for nine years now and it’s been such a great experience, so I hope there are many, many more years to come.”
His start in Citi’s capital markets origination program gave him exposure to various desks within the bank, including CMBS, a financing source that Citi is known for globally. His role today also gives him the opportunity to transact across the entire spectrum of real estate financings.
“I’m lucky enough to work on some very interesting transactions on the M&A side for some of the larger sponsored funds such as Blackstone and Brookfield, and I really enjoy both having and building a relationship with my clients,” he said.
It shows. Dunlevie has racked up almost a decade of stellar deals thus far, including a recent whopper that made headlines the world over. In August 2021, he worked on the first ever single-asset, single-borrower CMBS deal collateralized by data center assets with Blackstone’s $10 billion acquisition of QTS Realty Trust.
“It gave me an opportunity to really dig my teeth into an industry I wasn’t too familiar with, and be responsible for educating a large portion of the bond buyer market on a new asset class as well as a new transaction,” he said.
This year has brought on a new set of challenges as the industry grapples with heightened market volatility, yet Dunlevie had a productive year, working on more than $17 billion of financings. “Obviously, a lot of that was front-ended, but we benefit from the fact that we’re a really well-balanced platform; we have a top-tier large loan group and are actively involved in the syndicated loan market — which is a very robust market this year — as well as being very capable on the conduit side.”
Relationships remain key to Dunlevie, both on the client and colleague side. “I really enjoy the culture within our group,” he said. “The mentors that I have and my managers have just been just tremendous to work for.”—C.C.
