Eli Hattem is an expert with over thirty-five years of experience in commercial real estate (CRE) debt and equity capital markets, investment management, and asset management. Having worked on transactions totaling over $30 billion for large U.S. and Canadian commercial and investment banks, Mr. Hattem has wide-ranging experience with CRE debt and equity finance and operations issues.
Mr. Hattem has testified in depositions and court proceedings and served as an expert witness in matters involving alleged breaches of contract, material adverse events (MAEs), valuation, damages, and financial modeling.
During his career as a CRE professional, Mr. Hattem has addressed issues related to underwriting, deal origination, debt and equity syndication, commercial mortgage-backed securities and CMBS securitization, acquisitions of property and nonperforming loans, workouts and foreclosures, whole loan sales, loan and asset valuations, and debt and equity brokerage. Mr. Hattem has direct experience with many CRE-related financial products, including fixed-rate and floating-rate debt, bridge loans, construction loans, revolvers and lines of credit, warehouse facilities, letters of credit, repurchase agreements, B-notes, mezzanine loans, preferred equity, equity, and interest rate swaps and caps.
Through Lateral Partners, Mr. Hattem has significant experience acquiring and owning CRE assets, including the structuring, syndication, and modeling of general partner (GP) and limited partner (LP) equity interests. He is proficient in the legal and other documentation that govern debt and equity transactions. With respect to asset types, Mr. Hattem has worked on transactions involving most commercial property types, including multifamily rentals, condominiums and cooperatives, office, retail, hospitality, industrial, self-storage, land, medical office, mobile home parks, mixed-use properties, assisted living, and single-family rentals.
In addition to transactional expertise, Mr. Hattem has significant hands-on experience in structuring, building, and managing profitable CRE lending platforms; founding new investment and advisory ventures; and creating financial models to analyze CRE debt instruments and complex equity structures.
Mr. Hattem has held senior management roles at Merrill Lynch Mortgage Lending; CIBC Capital Markets; Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (later merged into Credit Suisse First Boston); and Chase Manhattan Bank. At CIBC, he oversaw the CMBS lending business, including heading up credit and underwriting, pricing, operations and staffing, and loan syndication and securitization. At Merrill Lynch, he served as chief operating officer of the CMBS conduit, headed the underwriting and closing groups, and was a voting member of the firm’s credit committee. While at Merrill Lynch, Mr. Hattem led a team of consultants and programmers to develop and build a comprehensive loan origination, underwriting, closing, and securitization environment to manage and run its CRE lending business.
Mr. Hattem was a founding partner at Park Bridge Financial, a boutique direct investment and advisory business whose clients include real estate investment trusts (REITs), CMBS trusts, private equity firms, opportunity funds, loan servicers and special servicers, and middle market owner/operators of CRE.
At Lateral Partners and Derby Real Estate Capital, where he is also a founding partner, Mr. Hattem leads CRE investment and related asset management and transaction activities, including origination, capital sourcing, underwriting, structuring, documentation, financial modeling, and asset management, as well as third-party debt and equity brokerage.