Gaw Capital Partners USA has appointed Ashish Gupta as senior vice president for acquisitions.
Gupta (pictured) will be based in the soon-to-be opened New York City office and is responsible for US investments for the firm, with a focus on projects located on the east coast and other select knowledge- and innovation-based markets such as Austin, Texas.
Most recently, Gupta was a senior vice president at Lehman Brothers where he was responsible for overseeing the restructuring, asset management and monetisation of a portfolio of debt and equity positions collateralised by approximately 30 million square feet of office space across several major US markets. Through restructurings and recapitalisations that had entailed third-party owned debt buybacks, joint venture partner buyouts, loan modifications, the arrangement of new funding facilities and change of control actions, Gupta created value in complicated and distressed situations and delivered an estimated USD2.5bn recovery to Lehman.
Prior to that, Gupta completed over USD17bn in property- and entity-level acquisitions in the US on behalf of a balance sheet equity product at Lehman.
Gaw Capital Partners USA is the new entity of Gaw Capital Partners, a Hong Kong-based private equity real estate fund management company with a strong geographic focus on Greater China and the Asian real estate markets in the past. Gaw Capital Partners currently manages four real estate funds targeting the Greater China and Asia Pacific region, while Gaw Capital Partners USA provides services for separate account direct investment and private equity real estate fund management in the US and UK markets.
Earlier this year, Timothy Walsh, the former chief investment officer and director of New Jersey Division of Investment, New Jersey's USD74bn pension fund, also joined Gaw Capital Partners USA as president and chief operating officer. Walsh will oversee US operations and increase the firm's investments in US real estate.
"I am pleased to join Gaw Capital during this exciting phase in its evolution," says Gupta. "I look forward to helping build on the success of our widely-respected operations in Asia and delivering exceptional returns in the US through investment in under-managed and under-capitalised assets."
Goodwin Gaw, chairman and managing principal of Gaw Capital Partners, says: "We are happy to welcome Ashish to our growing family. He has deep transactional experience in many facets of real estate investing and lending and I am grateful for his confidence in our platform to make this important move to us."