Chawla, Swill to Lead Carlton's Crowdfunding Venture

NEW YORK CITY—Carlton Group Chairman Howard L. Michaels reports the firm has appointed veteran real estate investment and asset management specialists Navish Chawla and Kevin Swill to lead the firm's accredited investor crowdfunding and equity syndication businesses.

The firm recently launched its Carlton Accredited Equity Crowdfunding website to further the acquisition capabilities of Carlton and Carlton Strategic Ventures (CSV), the principal transaction arm of Carlton, which owns and operates more than 3 million square feet of residential and commercial assets.

Chawla, who will serve as CSV's chief investment officer, spent the last six years working at private equity firm Madison International and previously with BlackRock. Chawla has played an integral role in the underwriting, management and acquisition of more than $2 billion of real estate transactions globally, company officials say.

Swill, who will run Carlton's crowdfunding site with Chawla, is also Carlton's COO and is responsible for institutional equity distribution, and managing relationships with broker/dealers, family offices and ultra-high net worth individuals. He has been involved in the financing, acquisition, asset management, and disposition of more than 13,000 apartments while serving as the president of Kushner Properties, Westminster Capital and Westminster Hospitality, all affiliates of Kushner Companies. While there, he had asset management responsibility for over four million square feet of commercial assets, and was significantly involved in the financing of 666 Fifth Avenue, a $2-billion Kushner acquisition.

Michaels also announced that that CSV has hired asset management, valuation and disposition specialist Bill Ohlsen, who spent the last 15 years at LNR and Ocwen Financial Corp, where he valued, underwrote and disposed of over 30 million square feet of assets.

“The recent hiring initiatives are intended to grow Carlton's principal transaction business and to increase our ability to participate with our clients in the joint ownership of real estate,” Michaels says. “Carlton will continue to provide pure advisory services for large, complicated transactions, but the clear shift of the company is to merchant banking and investment management transactions that in large part will give Carlton a better alignment of interest with their clients.”