Rockwood Capital Hires Four Senior Executives

SAN FRANCISCO & LOS ANGELES & WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rockwood Capital, LLC, the private real estate investment firm, today announced it has hired four new senior executives in its White Plains and Los Angeles offices. All four appointments are new positions within the firm and are effective immediately.

Joining the White Plains office are:

• Dwight “Arne” Arnesen, as Senior Managing Director, Portfolio & Asset Management. Arne will lead the firm’s Portfolio and Asset Management group.
• Marti Breier, as Legal Counsel. Marti will assist with various organizational, regulatory and transactional matters.

Joining the Los Angeles office are:

• Scott Stuckman, as Senior Managing Director, Separate Accounts. Scott will be the Portfolio Manager for the firm’s separate account client.
• Joel Mayer, as Director and Head of Retail. Joel will be the retail sector head and lead the firm’s retail asset management team. He will also work closely with the acquisitions team on new retail investments.

The appointments follow the promotions of three senior executives announced on August 6. They were: Peter Kaye, now Managing Director and Portfolio Manager for Rockwood Funds V and VII; Tyson Skillings, now Managing Director and Portfolio Manager for Rockwood Funds III, IV, VI and VIII; and Suzanne Woody, now Director and member of the portfolio and asset management team responsible for Rockwood’s hotel investments.

“We are constantly striving to build the best investment and operations teams and we believe that these four additions, along with the three promotions we announced last month, put us in a good position to optimize value in our existing portfolios while capitalizing on current opportunities,” said Ed Kavounas. “We believe deep market knowledge across a range of investment cycles is a key component of our future success. We are pleased we were able to attract such talented professionals as Arne, Marti, Scott, and Joel.”

Dwight “Arne” Arnesen, 53, is a seasoned real estate executive who has held senior roles in both acquisitions and asset management. Arnesen was most recently a Managing Director of Acquisitions in North America at JER Partners as well as interim head of Asset Management for JER’s European funds, where he leveraged his earlier experience of workouts and restructuring on numerous troubled assets. Prior to JER, he was a Managing Director and co-Head of US Acquisitions at Starwood Capital Group Global LLC. Before joining Starwood, he was a Principal at JPMorgan Partners FKA Chase Capital Partners and a senior office in the Real Estate Workout Group of Chemical Bank/Chase Manhattan Bank for 11 years. Mr. Arnesen is a member of the NY State Bar Association, the ULI and the ICSC and has spoken on numerous real estate panels.

Scott Stuckman, 54, has thirty-two years of experience in real estate. He was most recently a Senior Managing Director – U.S. Managed Accounts at CB Richard Ellis Investors. The U.S. Managed Accounts group was formed to focus exclusively on establishing CBREI as a competitive Separate Account Real Estate Advisory firm. Prior to CB Richard Ellis Investors, he was a Vice President, Acquisitions at RREEF, where he acquired for all of the firm’s Separate Accounts in all four major product types: Office, Retail, Multi-Family, and Industrial. Before joining RREEF, he was the National Director of the Industrial Group at JMB Realty. At JMB, he was involved in all investment, operational and strategic activities related to any Industrial property type.

Joel Mayer, 46, comes to Rockwood with over twenty years of experience as a real estate executive. Most recently, he was a Director at BlackRock Realty, where he helped establish the BlackRock Retail Opportunity Fund, a $500 million closed-end real estate equity fund. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President of Real Estate and Development at California Pizza Kitchen, responsible for managing the national expansion of CPK. Earlier, he was a Senior Vice President at Madison Marquette where he directed the leasing and portfolio management of Madison Marquette’s properties in the Western United States.

Marti Breier, 34, has nearly a decade of experience as a real estate attorney. Most recently she was an Associate at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP in Los Angeles, where she represented opportunity funds, pension funds, and real estate investment trusts in all aspects of office, retail, residential, hotel and resort property acquisition, financing, investment and managing. In addition, Breier brings significant experience in drafting and negotiating real estate transactional documents.

Rockwood Capital, LLC is a real estate investment firm that provides equity capital combined with real estate expertise for repositioning, recapitalization, development and redevelopment of commercial property types, including retail, hotel, residential, office, research and development space, and data centers in key markets throughout the United States. Since 1980, Rockwood and its principals have invested over $3.1 billion of equity in over $9.7 billion of real estate through seven Rockwood-managed commingled funds and various special purpose partnerships. Rockwood currently manages a portfolio of about $3.76 billion of invested equity in $4.9 billion of real estate on behalf of a variety of institutional and individual investors. In March, 2009, Rockwood had a final close on its $964 million Rockwood Capital Real Estate Partners Fund VIII, L.P.