Josh Cleveland (pictured) has joined Clairvue Capital Partners as Partner. Cleveland is a former Director of Business Development at Liquid Realty Partners, where he worked with Clairvue’s founding partners, Jeffrey Giller, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer, and Brendan MacDonald, Partner.
Cleveland will be joining Jeff Granoff, a Principal who started with Clairvue in January, in Clairvue’s New York office.
Clairvue invests in real estate funds, operating companies and other types of real estate vehicles by providing financing for their recapitalisations or restructurings, and by acquiring limited partnership interests from incumbent investors on a secondary basis. Clairvue was established in April 2010, and at the same time formed its first investment partnership, Clairvue Capital Partners I, LP, with a $250 million commitment from funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s private equity group.
“Josh, Brendan and I have been close professional colleagues and friends for nearly six years, and Brendan and I are delighted that Josh is back together with us to help us to continue to build the success of Clairvue.” says Giller. “Since its inception, Clairvue has focused on recapitalising real estate funds and other types of real estate vehicles, but with real estate values now stabilising, and rationality beginning to return to the secondaries market, we intend to draw on our significant past experience as secondaries investors and begin to pursue opportunities in this market as well. Josh’s deep experience and relationships in the secondaries market will be especially valuable to Clairvue as we expect the number of investment opportunities in that market to grow substantially in the near term.”
With 15 years of experience in the real estate, private equity and capital markets in the US and globally, Cleveland has an established track record in sourcing both investment opportunities and investor capital. At Liquid Realty Partners, he played a key role in sourcing new real estate private equity secondaries investments while assisting with the firm’s capital-raising activities. Earlier, he was a Vice President at Capital Dynamics, a Swiss-based private equity manager with USD20 billion under management, where he was instrumental in the establishment and growth of their North American business. Prior to that, Cleveland was employed in the debt capital markets division of Credit Suisse First Boston, where he was a member of an origination team that lead-managed over USD10 billion of corporate financings. Mr. Cleveland began his career at Bank of America as a financial analyst in the capital markets division.
A frequent speaker at real estate industry conferences and one of Private Equity Real Estate Magazine’s 2007 top 20 “rising stars” under 40, Cleveland is a member of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) and former delegate to the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE).
Cleveland is the second senior professional to join Clairvue in the last six months, part of a series of team additions that the firm has announced as it continues to expand. Clairvue has committed overUSD$100 million to real estate fund and platform-level recapitalisations in the last twelve months. Giller adds: “We are expecting to close at least two more investments before the end of third quarter of this year at which point most of our first fund will be committed.”
