"The company is at a point in time where contact with its clients is very important and having an office in New York facilitates that," explains Creamer. "The company also has offices in Baltimore and Boston and many of our people come through New York. Having an office here allows them to be in contact with clients in a formal setting."
"We are also looking to grow our investment management business, which I am directly involved in, and much of our activities will be in the New York area," he adds.
MMA Financial is a MuniMae company and counts multifamily as its strong suit. According to Creamer, the firm will build on its resources and core competencies to propel an investment advisory business that crosses different real estate lines--in addition to multifamily. "We have a core group of clients, a group of pension funds from Michigan that have been close to the company for a number of years, and we are going to build that client-focused business into other area of real estate and bring in other clients--pension funds, financial institutions and high-net worth clients."
MMA Financial currently has approximately $750 million from the Michigan pension funds under management, he adds.
Over the long term, Creamer anticipates the firm being viewed as a high-quality advisor that offers multiple investment alternatives with a set of clients that do more than one thing with MMA. "That creates a stronger client bond and a stronger base to grow on," he explains. "We'll probably, as we grow the business, look to be a differentiated type of player, not one that does everything for everybody but one that specializes in areas.
"There are some very good investment advisory firms in the marketplace and we are going to model ourselves after some of them, but we may be more of a specialized focus investment manager trying to do several things very well as opposed to doing many things very well," he adds.
Prior to his appointment at MMA Financial, Creamer was most recently a principal at Lend Lease responsible for the Commercial Credit Group's High Yield Debt and Marketing activities. He brings more than 32 years of experience in investment advisory, commercial real estate lending and corporate finance to MMA.
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