Hotel Finance Vet Owens Joins CBRE

NEW YORK CITY—Lodging finance veteran Mark Owens has joined CBRE Capital Markets as EVP to lead debt & structured finance for its hotels sector. Owens will be based in New York City, and will report to to Kevin Mallory, senior managing director and global head, CBRE Hotels; and Brian Stoffers, global president, debt & structured finance at Los Angeles-based CBRE.

With more than $6 billion in financing transactions to his credit, Owens is “the leading debt and equity professional in the hospitality sector, and we are delighted that he will lead our hotel debt and structured finance efforts in North America,” Mallory says. “He is now in a position to take advantage of CBRE's extensive global infrastructure and resources, while retaining the high-touch service that has been a key component of his career to date.” For CBRE, Owens will be responsible for securing debt and structured finance products, as well as institutional asset sales for the company's global hotel clients with assets located throughout North America.

Before joining CBRE, Owens spent eight years with Ackman-Ziff, where he led the firm's hospitality practice and was responsible for the origination and placement of hospitality related transactions, including debt, equity, joint-venture equity and transaction sales. During his time with Ackman-Ziff, he consistently arranged more than $1 billion in hospitality debt and equity transactions per year. ??

Previously, Owens served as VP at Sonnenblick Goldman, where he closed $3 billion in transactions representing a variety of institutional and opportunistic investors, as well as ownership/management companies. He also worked at HVS International's New York office, where he consulted on more than $2 billion in hospitality real estate around the world, including expert testimony, valuations, feasibility analysis, operational consulting and strategic marketing initiatives.