Joel Ross

Executive Bio

Mr. Ross began his career in Wall St as an investment banker in 1965, where he handled public offerings, mergers & acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, and other corporate advisory matters for a variety of clients. During the seventies he was CEO of North American operations for a UK based conglomerate where he acquired and oversaw six companies. He also sat on the parent company board. In 1981, he began his own firm handling leveraged buyouts and investment banking, as well as financing real estate syndications. In 1984 Mr. Ross began providing investment banking services and arranging financing for real estate transactions with his own firm, Ross Properties, Inc.

In 1993 Mr. Ross and a partner, Lexington Mortgage, created the first Wall St hotel CMBS program in conjunction with Nomura. They went on to develop a similar CMBS program for another major Wall St investment bank and for five leading hotel companies. Lexington, in partnership with Mr. Ross established a hotel mortgage bank table funded by an investment bank, and making all CMBS hotel loans on their behalf. These were the first capital markets financing programs for hotels to be created since 1989, and it reopened Wall St to the hotel industry.

In 1999 he formed Citadel Realty Advisors as a successor to Ross Properties Corp., which focuses on all types of real estate investment banking. This includes raising equity, mezzanine capital and debt for individual properties as well as entities, and advising individuals on the formation of new entities for which he then raised the equity funding. In addition to the US, Citadel has arranged the financing for numerous office and industrial transactions in the UK and Paris. He has closed over $3.0 billion of financings for office, hotel, retail, land and multifamily projects.

Mr. Ross was co-master developer for a 240 acre brownfield mixed use development in Sacramento, CA., while continuing the investment banking practice in New York. He was also a founder of Market Street Investors, a brownfield land development company. Mr Ross is also involved in the acquisition of notes on defaulted loans and various REO assets in conjunction with several major investors.

Mr. Ross has served as an expert witness in eight court cases testifying on debt structures, interest rates, markets and development. He was an adjunct professor in the graduate program at the NYU Hotel School. He is a member of Urban Land Institute and was a member of the leadership of his ULI council. In 1999, he conceived and co-authored with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Hotel Mortgage Performance Report, a major study of hotel mortgage default rates.

Mr. Ross is a graduate of the Wharton School and served two tours in Vietnam with the US Navy.

Contact Joel Ross

  • Securitization Was As Much To Blame As Anything

    Securitization Was As Much To Blame As Anything I created the first hotel CMBS programs in March, 1993 so I have a lot of first hand understanding of what happened. Low interest rates and high mortgages were not the cause, just the manifestation of the crisis. While many things and people all came together...

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  • The Sovereign Debt Issue is Being Way Overplayed

    The Sovereign Debt Issue Is Being Way Over Played I am not suggesting at all that the PIGS problems are not serious, they are. However, the thing everyone is missing is that the EU cannot allow these minor countries to drag down the budding economic recovery, nor can the US Fed. The European bank and...

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  • Where Are All The Deals

    Where Are All The Deals Everyone is asking when will the lenders start to sell paper and REO in a meaningful way. The answer is- not for a long time. The problem is twofold. First the banks are so damaged that they cannot bear the hit to capital that a true recognition of current value would require....

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  • TALF, PPIP, TARP and the real politics behind them

    TALF, PPIP, TARP and the real politics behind them We no longer hear the media and politicians talking much about toxic assets and restarting securitization. The reality is all of this was pure politics. In late 2008 Paulson and Bernancke had to make a dramatic move to prove that the government was going...

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  • About Joel Ross

    JOEL ROSS PRINCIPAL CITADEL REALTY ADVISORS http://www.citadelrealty.com Mr. Ross began his career in Wall St as an investment banker in 1965, where he handled public offerings, mergers & acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, and other corporate advisory matters for a variety of clients. During the seventies...

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