Lawrence Gray and Robert Verrone have been named co-heads of Real Estate Americas. The group covers all domestic of its real estate clients including public and privately owned real estate operators, homebuilders and gaming companies, commercial mortgage backed securities, structured finance, real estate corporate banking, tax credit and agency finance, real estate syndications, and real estate collateralized debt obligation sales and trading.

Gray is a managing director and former head of the firm's Real Estate Investment Banking group. He joined the company in 1997 to form the Real Estate Investment Banking group, which he has led for the past 10 years. Verrone is a managing director and former head of Real Estate Capital Markets Americas. He joined Wachovia in 1995.

Leslie Fairbanks is the new co-head and Dan Sullivan has been named as interim co-head, of Real Estate Asset Management, which includes Wachovia's CMBS servicing operation, construction loan underwriting, and construction loan portfolio management. A former attorney at several New York law firms, Fairbanks joined Wachovia in 1999. Sullivan previously managed the Debt Capital Markets team within Wachovia's Real Estate Corporate Finance group.

Wachovia's real estate platform will service clients through these two business lines--Real Estate Americas and Real Estate Asset Management--and its executives will report to Tom Wickwire, managing director and head of Structured Products within the Fixed Income division of the Corporate and Investment Bank. The firm is also expanding its global coverage, moving Bill Green, managing director and former head of Real Estate Capital Markets in the US, to London to become head of Real Estate Europe.

Clients can expect to see the same, if not increased, level of creativity in Wachovia's product development as a result of the new platform, Wickwire tells GlobeSt.com. "We are always looking at developing new products and having the real estate operations in one division will facilitate that. We did the first CRE CDO, for instance. Now, by putting together these people we can come up with new real estate solutions using the capital markets and own balance sheet."

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Erika Morphy

Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.