GlobeSt.com: Before we discuss any deals, tell me about the genealogy of RCG Longview.

Boxer: Ramius Capital was founded in 1994 by our senior partner, Peter Cohen, the former chairman of Shearson Lehman. We're a registered investment advisor and an asset-management firm that manages money on behalf of wealthy individuals and institutions looking for slow, steady and stable returns. Peter likes to say we're in the stay-rich rather than the get-rich business. Ramius does a lot of things and Longview is a specialized piece of it. I met Peter in 1994 when he was looking for a real estate component. Today, the firm's real estate activities are threefold: With our operating partners, we own Urban American Housing, which owns and manages a portfolio of working class housing in dense urban areas. We also invest in commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities; it's more of a capital-markets component to what we do. Naturally, I spend a lot of my time on Longview, our lending business.

GlobeSt.com: What sets Longview apart?

Boxer: We focus on properties where there are issues, where there's something about the asset or the borrower or the timing that conventional lenders can't get their arms around. We're a non-conventional lender that gets paid more than conventional lenders get paid.

GlobeSt.com: How much more?

Boxer: Borrowers are willing to pay our rates, which vary based on the deal, because they like the certainty of close by real estate professionals. The fact that we own and manage property as our primary business allows us to go to places other conventional lenders aren't able to go. If there's an asset that has a cash-flow problem, a traditional lender may not attribute as much value to that asset. We'll know if we can get any of our developer friends to step in and take this off our hands for $100 a foot, and I'm willing to attribute significant value for that reason.

GlobeSt.com: The Enron Building certainly had its share of issues.

Boxer: It was a vacant, 1.2-million-sf building in Downtown Houston with the Enron name attached to it. And we're talking about an office market with a 15% vacancy factor. It was a deal that was very difficult for a lot of people to get their arms around. But Houston is basically a five-year office leasing market. There's roughly 25 million sf in the CBD, which means that approximately 25 million feet rolls every five years. The buyer, Gary Barnett, came to us and said if he couldn't grab onto a million sf of that by being the low-cost provider in what was by far the best building in town, he shouldn't be in this business. It was that simple an idea, and we were comfortable. Our per-foot exposure was even less than Gary's because we were up on the capital stack. Our breakeven on the Enron building was something like $65 a sf. We provided a $20-million mezz loan behind senior financing from Corus Bank. The building was ultimately sold by us to Chevron for their own purposes.

GlobeSt.com: Then what sort of deals make you wince?

Boxer: What gives me pause are the deals done on high-profile assets using a lot of floating-rate debt. If interest rates rise at a rate that exceeds cash-flow growth, the property is going to experience problems servicing that debt. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if you buy an asset at a five-and-a-half cap rate and the all-in cost of your floating-rate debt is four and a half, if rates go up and the cost of your debt goes from four and a half to six, that property is underwater.

GlobeSt.com: As real estate professionals, what sort of value can you add to a deal?

Boxer: At Herald Center here in Manhattan, the two partners had some disagreements and we were asked to finance the buyout of one partner by the other. We consummated a preferred-equity transaction and we were handed the keys as property manager. In fact, Jeffrey Feil, one of our operational managing partners, heads property management for the center. It's a good example of where borrowers come to us and recognize the value we can add.