Siraj Dadabhoy and Michael Betancourt, the principals of real estate investment and asset management company DCD America, Inc., recently unveiled the formation of AION Partners, a real estate private equity company that partners with other sources of capital and brings leadership to acquisition, development and financing opportunities across the U.S. "AION is a partnership of experienced professionals and principals, invested in this company, and committed to originating transactions and enhancing the value through aggressive, meticulous asset management," Dadabhoy said. "Michael and I, and much of the AION team have worked together successfully for years. We are hitting the ground running in an environment we believe will offer tremendous opportunity for the most experienced investors." AION Partners has already employed its new structure to purchase eight non-performing first mortgage and mezzanine loans with a value in excess of $150 million over the last six months. "Our track record for closing deals and delivering on our promises while principals at DCD America serves us well now as AION Partners in originating transactions from a variety of sources. Our excellent relationships with lenders and equity partners such as ING Clarion, Northstar Realty Finance, the Carlyle Group and Middle Eastern Financial institutions-as well as the founding partners of DCD Group-enable us to move quickly to secure these opportunities," said Betancourt. "We are excited about the launch of AION Partners. We have great confidence in the team and look forward to supporting and working with them going forward," said Shabir Randeree, chairman of UK based DCD Group. The AION Partners team is best known for their success in core-plus and value-add office, mixed-use redevelopment and stabilized and market rate apartments, having assembled a portfolio of prime properties in Manhattan, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. "We have recently been focusing on the acquisition of whole loans with a view to acquire the underlying property and re-branding the assets in order to create a national portfolio and structure for further expansion. At the same time, we will continue to seek opportunities in the office and redevelopment arena, where we have a great depth of experience," Dadabhoy said. "We've been working on this transition for more than a year, refining our model to ensure that we would create a nimble and aggressive acquisition structure, allowing us to co-invest with our partners and utilize our experience in finance and management to bring greater opportunity to our partners and ourselves," said Betancourt. Experienced in development as well as management, the AION Partner's leadership team will seek opportunities to build in the areas where they have developed competencies as appropriate opportunity are presented. Betancourt said the company will be assembling a pool of capital from which it will draw upon to move quickly when opportunities arise. "We have the professional team, systems and capacity necessary to be extremely active through this cycle, and designed AION Partners specifically to emerge as a formidable player in the market," Betancourt said. "There are some who are shrinking as a means of addressing this market. AION Partners is the opposite: we are launching our venture with the intent to be a very significant and active investor and operator, growing over the coming years in tandem with our portfolio and the value we bring to our partners."