| Cathartes Investments Forms Joint Venture with
AEW II to Acquire Boston Office Properties |
Boston, MA (October 1997) Cathartes Investments, a
Boston-based real estate investment firm, has formed a joint venture with AEW
Partners II, L.P. to acquire and reposition Boston-area office properties. AEW
Partners II, an investment partnership managed by AEW Capital Management on
behalf of institutional investors, has committed $25 million to the venture,
with the option of committing an additional $25 million, to fund the venture's
acquisition activity.
The venture will seek to acquire twelve to
fifteen office properties in the Boston area. Three office properties totaling
565,000 square feet in the Fort Point Channel and North Station sub-markets
already have been identified for purchase, with closings expected within the
next 60 days. Each of the properties will undergo substantial redevelopment.
"We are very excited about our venture with AEW Partners II," said
Ruben Moreno, Principal and Managing Director of Cathartes Investments. "The
two entities share an opportunistic orientation. Cathartes' niche is to target
properties in superior locations and fundamentally sound condition which have
under-performed relative to their markets. We then work to recapture lost value
and create significant new value by redeveloping and repositioning. We also
adhere to a strict trading discipline that leads us to sell when better
relative values materialize."
Cathartes Investments, which recently
changed its name from The Cathartes Group to better reflect its value-added
investment strategy, is a real estate investment firm specializing in acquiring
undervalued commercial, industrial and residential properties in major North
American markets. Cathartes has invested $55 million of client capital in
commercial properties with an aggregate total market value of $80 million. The
firm expects to close approximately $90 million of real estate transactions in
1997.
AEW Capital Management, L.P. serves as investment advisor to
major institutional investors, including corporate, public and union pension
funds, university endowments and government entities. The firm focuses on
high-yield direct equity and debt investing, the construction and management of
real estate securities portfolios (REITs and CMBS), and the active management
and repositioning of direct property portfolios. On behalf of its institutional
clients, the firm currently manages $6.8 billion of capital, which is invested
in more than $13 billion of real estate nationwide.
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