NEW YORK CITY—In a major bid to expand its real estate practice, Hunton & Williams has added two lawyers to its industry bench, GlobeSt.com has learned EXCLUSIVELY.
Attorneys Jerome Dano and Valerie Kitay have been brought on as counsel from Thacher Profitt & Wood and Goodwin Procter, respectively. The former has experience in the CMBS market while the latter brings fund formation expertise to the table.
“We have a rapidly growing real estate practice that's gone from zero at the beginning of April 2012 to 27 in New York and it's even bigger nationwide,” says Carl Schwartz, co-head of the global real estate practice. “The more types of experience you can bring to a client, the better.”
Dano practiced with Thacher for more than a decade, building significant experience in mortgage loan originations designated for the CMBS market. He has represented lending institutions and real estate investors in a variety of real estate transactions, including the origination, restructure, purchase, sale, securitization and syndication of mortgage and mezzanine loans, as well as the investment in and disposition of commercial real estate assets.
“I wanted to join a firm that offered a real estate practice,” he says. “My goal is to add depth to the bench to serve the financial clients here and expand the existing client base.”
Adds Schwartz, “CMBS and loan origination is as busy as it can be and there are a lot of opportunities out there. Jerome will give us another senior level attorney with that experience.”
Kitay comes to the firm with a similar mindset to Dano. “Hunton is such a growing practice, it's an established, premier firm with a presence in New York and nationally, yet it's entrepreneurial and hungry,” she says. “That's an exciting place to be.”
She continues, “I've had a real transactional practice and real estate fund formation experience. It's an interesting way to raise capital so I hope to bring it to clients, especially smaller companies just getting into real estate and using smaller sources of funding.
Kitay already had a relationship, of sorts, with Hunton & Williams, notes Schwartz. “We share clients, like Savanna, which we've worked with for decades and which Valerie has been with for some time. Her fund experience allows her to bring in the ability to look at transactions differently than others in the office.
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
