CBRE INVESTORS LAUNCHES FOCUSED ACQUISITION TEAM

LOS ANGELES Ń As a way to adapt to today's real estate climate and prepare for a busy year, CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) Investors has launched of a focused acquisitions team within its Strategic Partners U.S. Fund program. In the past, acquisition team members focused on different regions of the country and took a soup to nuts approach to handling acquisitions by overseeing all stages of the process. With the launch of its focused acquisitions team, CBRE Investors has created a team whose sole mission is to focus on finding acquisition opportunities for the more than $2.5 billion in capital in CBRE Investors has ready to deploy in the next 12 to 18 months as part of the fund. This is all about execution, says Phil Hench, a principal with CBRE Investors and co-head of the new acquisitions team. This is about us making the decision that we're at the right point in the cycle to pursue new investments and dedcating the right amount of resources to achieve that. There is a lot of opportunistic capital and foreign capital that has entered into the marketplace looking to make strategic purchases in the currently economic cycle, says Mike Kane, a senior director of CBRE Investors who has been brought into the new focused acquisitions team from CBRE Capital Markets. Kane adds that traditional capital sources are also still in the market, and the two capital sources will be competing for the same in the coming year. In addition to Kane joining the group, Senior Director Jeff Torto will temporarily move from the Managed Accounts Group acquisition team to the Strategic Partners U.S. acquisitions team. The acquisitions team contains nine people and is led by Hench along with Mike Burrichter. Ń Coleman Wood