CBRE Loan Services Forms New Third-Party Commercial Loan Advisory Platform

Chris Shamaly, senior managing director, CBRE Loan Services

NEW YORK CITY—CBRE reports that its Loan Services unit has formed a new third-party commercial loan underwriting and advisory platform that will be led by two former Lehman Brothers executives.

Albert Picallo and Masato Inagaki, who co-founded Focal Point Capital Advisors in 2011, will join the new CBRE Loan Services entity as managing director and head of underwriting and director, underwriting respectively. The new third-party commercial loan underwriting and advisory unit will be based at CBRE’s New York City offices.

Through the Focal Point Advisors platform, Picallo and Inagaki underwrote more than $10 billion in mortgage loans, mezzanine loans and equity transactions. The two veteran commercial finance professionals have completed transactions representing $15 billion in property value over the past nine years.

“Albert and Masato have worked with some of the most recognizable names in commercial real estate finance and have closed every type of transaction in every major market with private equity real estate funds, global investment banks, and hedge funds,” says Chris Shamaly, senior managing director, CBRE Loan Services—a wholly-owned line of business within CBRE Capital Markets. “Both bring a tremendous amount of experience to our growing team that now manages more than $200 billion of commercial real estate loan servicing worldwide,”

Picallo has more than 25 years’ experience in commercial real estate capital markets and has held senior positions in development, origination, asset management and workout sectors of the business on both the principal and service side, CBRE reports.

“Joining CBRE will allow us to enhance the services we provide to our existing clients and will allow the CBRE Loan Services platform to build on its array of offerings and world-class service to clients,” Picallo says.

Prior to co-founding Focal Point, Picallo resolved some of the largest and most complicated assets in the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Prior to his work for the Lehman estate, he headed the underwriting department for Lehman’s Principal Transactions Group, where he managed a staff of 20 underwriters in New York and Los Angeles and was responsible for coordinating underwriting and presenting credit recommendations to senior management.

In addition to his tenure at Focal Point, Inagaki has more than 15 years’ experience in commercial real estate acquisition and finance, including performing underwriting analysis and due diligence for Lehman Brothers’ Global Real Estate Group. In addition, he also performed valuation and underwriting of commercial real estate assets in East and Southeast Asia.