American Financial Realty Trust raised $400 million in a private offering by Arlington, VA-based Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group. The REIT was formed primarily to acquire bank branches and office buildings from financial institutions for leaseback to credit and financial institutions. Typically, it will own and manage the properties it acquires.
While senior vice president of operations Sonya Huffman would neither confirm nor deny GlobeSt.com reports the new REIT expects to spend in excess of $1 billion over the next two years, it did reveal plans for acquiring 250 more properties. She declined to quantify the aggregate square footage of the portfolio.
"We're a growing company and we hope to acquire at that level, but I won't comment on our threshold," she says. "The majority are bank branches with the balance in office buildings."
She declined comment on published reports the REIT plans to go public.
Lewis Ranieri, a previous vice chairman of Salomon Brothers, was hired as American's chairman. Nicholas Schorsch, a principal of a subsidiary of the previous American resource group, is chief executive officer of the new REIT.
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