NAI Global Member Offices in Louisiana Merge

Posted by on Jan 20, 2015

Latter & Blum is a commercial real estate firm based out of Louisiana who, due to a recent merger, has added a new office to its ever expanding operations. NAI Lake Charles will become NAI/Latter & Blum and will serve as their southwest Louisiana office, and add nine new agents to the firm.

This acquisition marks the fifth expansion in two years, making Latter & Blum the only private commercial real estate firm covering the central, southwest and Gulf Coast of Louisiana. The Chairman and CEO of Latter & Blum, Bob Merrick believes the addition of a commercial office in Lake Charles will open up more referral opportunities for their agents in New Orleans on both the commercial and residential fronts. NAI Lake Charles follows the firm’s acquisition of ERA Moffett Realty Inc. in August, a residential real-estate firm. This will also allow them to maintain their high level of service, while meeting the demands of the on-going industrial expansion in the state. Latter & Blum has a network that spans from Texas to Mississippi. This collection of companies includes CJ Brown Realtors and Noles-Frye Realty in Baton Rouge and Alexandria respectively.

The Latter & Blum offices in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Houma and Alexandria, as well as the newly added NAI Lake Charles office, are all existing members of the NAI Global network of independently owned commercial real estate firms. NAI Global has over 350 offices worldwide and is managed network of firms, owned by C-III Capital Partners, since an acquisition in 2011 led by C-III’s CEO Andrew Farkas.

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Anubis Advisors’ Role in the Farkas Empire

Posted by on Jan 5, 2015

Anubis Advisors was founded in March 2010 by Andrew Farkas, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Island Capital Group LLC. ICG is a real estate merchant banking and asset management firm that operates internationally but has its primary location in New York City. Anubis acts as an advisory company to ICG, ICG’s portfolio companies and others, on issues such as distressed debt acquisition, real estate and asset management.

The services provided by Anubis include strategic planning, M&A, restructuring, executive management and some financial services. Anubis’ management team consists of professionals, including Mr. Farkas as acting CEO, who were responsible for the continued development and expansion of Insignia Financial Group, Inc. which was one of the top three global real estate firms between 1991 and 2003.

One of Anubis’ clients within the portfolio of ICG companies is C-III Capital Partners LLC and its subsidiary C-III Asset Management LLC. C-III provides creative solutions to equity and debt problems within the real estate market, while its asset management team service a portfolio of almost $120 billion of commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS). Anubis’ role is to assist C-III in their integration of a principle capital deployment and M&A strategy within their existing operations, in the hopes of acquiring more CMBS fund managers and incremental CMBS, among other servicing operations. Under the direction of Anubis, C-III also intends to further pursue third-party servicing relationships and expand into new lines of business that correspond with current business operations.

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