Michael Boxer Of RCG Longview

On the surface of it, it all sounds pretty plain-vanilla. Manhattan-based RCG Longview LP, one in a large handful of funds managed by Ramius Capital Group, is an opportunistic lender that traffics in bridge, mortgage and mezz loans. But, according to Michael D. Boxer, a partner in the group, RCG Longview goes where other more conventional lenders dare not. Does the Enron Building ring a bell? It’s just a sample of the problematic deals Longview has come to the table–with other lenders, of course–to resolve. The details of such high-ticket, high-profile deals–and the relationship with Ramius that brought Longview to this point, were all topics of a recent, exclusive conversation with Boxer, who oversees all Ramius real estate activities.

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.