Inside Westwood’s Complicated Corporate Restructuring

Randy Banchik is the co-CEO of Westwood Financial Corp.

LOS ANGELES—Westwood Financial Corp. announced a $1.2-billion corporate restructuring of 77 assets last month in what is shaping up to be on of the most complicated transactions of the year. The capital markets team at HFF, led by Kevin MacKenzie, secured $210 million in first lien financing on a total of ten retail properties located in Arizona, California, Kansas, North Carolina and Texas markets.

“We took on a very complicated transaction to do all of the things that we needed to  do to combine, really, hundreds of entities and a portfolio of this many properties and transfer this many loans,” Randy Banchik, co-CEO of Westwood Financial Corp., tells GlobeSt.com. “The complexity was greater than many of our top advisors had been through before. It also speaks to the necessary evolution of private companies to be able to compete in this arena. We have opened up so many avenues for ourselves because we were willing to make this commitment.” Coordinating multiple assets, a newly formed sponsorship entity and an extended closing timeline contributed to the complexities of the deal.