NewOak Capital appoints Levenson managing director and chairman

NewOak Capital has appointed Amy Levenson managing director and chairman of its newly formed Commercial Real Estate Loans and Properties Capital Markets Group responsible for creating and executing real estate capital market solutions for clients. NewOak's Commercial Real Estate Loans and Property Capital Markets Group will offer one-stop structuring and execution solutions for entities looking to dispose or recapitalize real estate and related assets and loans. Members of the team have real estate capital markets and sales experience along with real estate and securities licenses, making it a unique real estate asset platform. Asset types include REOs, CMBS, CLOs, CDOs, whole loans, mezzanine debt, and stable to busted individual properties or pools of properties. The team has relationships with hedge funds, private equity funds, banks, insurance companies, and REITs and has access to experienced developers, MAI appraisers and construction consultants. Levenson has over 25 years of experience on Wall St., primarily at Goldman Sachs and previously at Barclays Capital. At Goldman Sachs, she divided her tenure between institutional bond trading and sales to the hedge fund and insurance industries. Her multi-decade relationships with the hedge fund community and experience as head bank note trader at Goldman Sachs enable NewOak Capital to provide coverage on both sides of the real estate asset trade. Levenson holds an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School and a BA from Columbia University. Under Amy Levenson's leadership, other members of the team include: Jon Fischer, MD, a Member of the Appraisal Institute, a graduate of the Wharton Business School and a career real estate professional who previously served as the Director of Corporate Real Estate for Prudential Insurance Company; and Farrah Lakhani, an Associate Director, who was recently at the private equity firm Lightyear Capital and formerly at Credit Suisse, where she focused on REITs and financial institutions. Farrah holds a BA from Hamilton College where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude. "Professionals who have worked with Amy know that her level of energy, integrity, and desire to help the clients is unmatched," says Ron D'Vari, CEO and Co-Founder of NewOak Capital. "We are glad to have Amy lead our team of experts focusing on real estate capital markets solutions, a critical service demanded by the market and our clients," adds D'Vari. "Amy will lead an important part of the NewOak Capital business as she and her team will help our clients transfer risk or identify investment opportunities. We're excited to be able to attract such talented professionals in Amy and her team to our platform and look forward to continuing to identify the needs of our clients and provide value-added services." says James Frischling, President and Co-Founder of NewOak Capital. "We are very excited to have Amy and her team as we broaden our capital markets capabilities at NewOak Capital in the real estate space," says Shad Quraishi, Vice Chairman and Head of NewOak Capital's Business Development. "Given the dislocation in the commercial real estate securitization and lending markets, we believe that this business represents one of the most significant opportunities to create liquidity by providing creative solutions." NewOak Capital is an advisory, asset management and capital markets firm organized to serve as an ally to institutions in addressing the challenges of the global credit markets. Using an integrated analytics platform, we provide analysis, valuation, restructuring, risk transfer and investment management solutions and services to financial institutions and other investors. The NewOak Capital team consists of more than 40 professionals with an average of more than 20 years of experience across multiple asset classes and credit cycles. Our experts incorporate the interaction of residential/commercial, consumer, and corporate credits via capital markets, financial institutions, corporate spending/capital needs, and consumer behavior. NewOak Capital is not encumbered by legacy or rear-view analysis by design. We have a reality-based, forward looking fundamental approach to credit analysis. NewOak is able to apply consistent analysis across large and complex portfolios and create valuable security and portfolio level risk profiles as well as valuation across scenarios that are easy to visualize and explain.