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» New Joint Venture to Acquire AMS Servicing Seneca Mortgage Investments L.P., is set to acquire AMS Servicing LLC, according to an announcement released recently. Seneca Mortgage Investments, headquartered in New York City, is a newly formed joint venture of Arbor Commercial Mortgage, LLC, as well as an affiliate of the global credit platform GSO Capital Partners L.P., which is owned by the Blackstone Group, and alternative asset manager EJF Capital, LLC. AMS Servicing, currently 100 percent owned by Arbor Commercial Mortgage, is a national specialty servicer headquartered in the Buffalo suburb of Depew, New York, whose clients include some of the nation's largest banks and investment funds. AMS Servicing assists clients with residential and small balance commercial mortgages. The company specializes in high-risk, real-estatesecured loan portfolios and component default servicing. Pending regulatory approval, Arbor Commercial Mortgage will sell AMS Servicing to Seneca Mortgage Investments. The transaction is expected to close within the next several months. Seneca Mortgage Investments says its strategy is to invest in residential mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), targeting opportunities arising from the changes taking place across the residential mortgage landscape. As a non-bank, non-originator, Seneca Mortgage Investments intends to provide the residential mortgage marketplace with customized mortgage servicing solutions. Seneca Mortgage Investments and its subsidiaries will be externally managed by Seneca Mortgage Management, LLC, with offices in New York City and Depew. Six New REITs Outperform Market Ten real estate investment trusts (REITs) have gone public this year, and six have outperformed the market, according to SNL Financial, a New York-based firm that analyzes the financial and real estate markets. Year-to-date as of October 3, the 10 REITs raised $3.4 billion through their initial public offerings (IPOs), according to SNL, which calculated each REIT's returns since its respective IPO date and compared those numbers to the SNL U.S. REIT Equity Index over the same time period. Outpacing the index by about 21 percentage points, Chicago-based Aviv REIT claimed the highest return of all the REITs with IPOs this year. Aviv went public with an initial $303.6 million offering on March 20 and earned an 18.27 percent return year-todate. This compares to the SNL index return of -2.82 percent over the same time period. Physicians Realty Trust and Gladstone Land Corp. also performed substantially better than the SNL index, outpacing it by 15.23 percentage points and 14.97 percentage points, respectively. Physicians Realty went public July 18, offering shares for $11.50 each, and has raised $135 million since its IPO date, a 7.91 percent return compared to the index return of -7.31 percent over the same time period. Gladstone Land Corp. has brought in a 13.49 percent return since its IPO January 28 compared to the market return of -1.48 percent. The Gladstone REIT has raised $56.7 million year-to-date. The three other REITs released this year that outperformed the market were Rexford Industrial Realty Inc., American Homes 4 Rent, and Empire State Realty Trust Inc. Rexford introduced its IPO July 18, raising $230 million at $14 per share. The REIT's returns were 4.81 percentage points higher than the SNL index. American Homes 4 Rent released its IPO July 31 with one of the largest REIT IPOs to date, according to SNL. The REIT raised about $811.8 million in its initial offering and has gained a -2.5 percent return year-to-date. Despite its negative return, it was the only single-family REIT to perform better than the SNL index since its IPO date. Empire State Realty Trust Inc. introduced its IPO October 1, raising $919.5 million. The REIT has outperformed the index by 3.12 percentage points through October 3. Just as SNL released its findings of the year's 10 new publicly traded REITs, QTS Realty Trust, Inc., announced it is introducing an IPO of 12.25 million shares at $21 per share for a total return of about $257 million. Four other REIT IPOs announced for later this year include Blackstone spinoff Brixmor Property Group Inc., Ellington Housing Inc., Waypoint Homes Realty Trust Inc., and Colony American Homes Inc., the latter two of which have been prominent players in the REO-to-rental market. VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM NewOak Acquires Smith Regulatory Strategies New York-based NewOak Advisors announced the formation of a strategic alliance with Smith Regulatory Strategies, a Washington D.C.-based consulting firm specializing in financial services risk management and regulatory compliance. The merger allows NewOak Advisors to complement its expertise and expand its established financial services advisory offerings to clients across complex asset valuation, risk, stress testing, capital adequacy, and regulatory compliance. "Developing a business relationship with Smith Regulatory Strategies is a logical extension of our advisory business due to the complementary capabilities," said Ron D'Vari, CEO of NewOak. "NewOak's core business is to provide risk, valuation, credit, financial technology, and related business process management services to financial companies, large and small." D'Vari added, "In addition to bringing clarity to the legacy issues from the credit crisis, including litigation defense, more and more we are helping clients design and implement best-in-class business management processes surrounding compliance and complex reporting to address new banking, consumer, and derivatives regulations. Whether it's mortgage-related compliance, valuation for provisioning, capital adequacy or stress testing, our solutions combine domain expertise, legal interpretation, customized process design and state-of-the-art technology and information." "The alliance with NewOak is an important development for our firm and our clients," said SRS' Smith, a recognized expert in the laws and regulations applicable to banks payment systems and the financial products offered by banks and other financial services firms. "The correct solution for our clients is combining SRS' deep understanding of the regulatory environment with NewOak's ability to provide the domain knowledge and quantitative skills to implement the needed solutions," Smith continued. "NewOak has the depth of expertise across complex, illiquid, and hard to value assets. Combined with our team's significant experience in all facets of regulation we present a compelling end-to-end solution." 87

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