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Force 10 Partners

An advisory firm specializing in corporate restructuring, challenged businesses, litigation, and other special situations.

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Force 10 Industries

Real Estate

Whether real estate is a core asset, part of an investment portfolio, or an operational resource, distressed real estate situations require specialized expertise.

Force 10’s real estate team members have owned and managed real estate portfolios, invested across all levels of the capital structure, and executed development projects. Our breadth and depth of experience make us uniquely qualified to solve troubled situations.

Real Estate challenges

Financial distress involving real estate can be complex, contentious, and emotional. Achieving an even-handed, optimal resolution—for borrowers and creditors—requires real-world experience in capitalizing, developing, asset managing, and transacting real estate. It also requires the ability to speak candidly about courses of action market conditions will support, even when it’s not what the parties involved want to hear.

A Unique Combination

Force 10 achieves the exceptional results we do precisely because our real estate experts bring real world, hands-on experience to the table. Before joining Force 10, the members of our team held leadership roles with both publicly-traded and privately-held institutional real estate firms—serving as the Chief Investment Officer of a private equity firm, managing portfolios, lending to projects and real estate-dependent operating companies, and executing full-cycle development projects.

Force 10’s extensive experience and deep understanding of the complexities inherent in distressed situations enable us to navigate challenges confidently. Our team excels at providing clear-headed analysis and communication, even under pressure, to develop and negotiate effective solutions that deliver optimal outcomes.

Our extensive experience in

Distressed Real Estate

Allows us to provide clear analysis and communication under pressure, leading to effective solutions and optimal outcomes.

Our expertise covers

Restructuring

Resolving distressed real estate situations requires in-depth analyses of capital structures, cash flow projections, financing options, asset performance, and valuation.

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Successfully restructuring real estate assets and investments, including loan terms, covenants, and tenant leases, requires a complete and nuanced understanding of operations, financial structures, and market conditions. Handled well, a restructuring can enhance value in various ways, including recapitalization, identifying additional opportunities to generate cash flow, or monetizing an asset’s value.

Defining the right business plan for a distressed asset is a critical, often underappreciated part of the restructuring process. Repositioning or repurposing an asset, often overlooked, can be highly beneficial. If monetizing the asset is required, the best outcome requires a realistic approach to the market. Force 10 excels in all of these aspects of real estate restructuring.

Our real estate restructuring expertise includes:

  • Constructing, evaluating, and executing turnaround strategies and restructuring plans
  • Financial modeling to support restructuring recommendations
  • Evaluating and providing guidance with respect to creditor rights
  • Negotiating with stakeholders
  • Providing interim executive services (e.g., CRO or CFO)
  • Structuring and executing spin-offs/carve-outs

Investment banking

Special situations involving real estate assets with a “story” calls for expertise in real estate-specific investment banking to understand the perspectives of debtors, lenders, and prospective buyers.

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Underperforming real estate assets may necessitate a range of strategic interventions, including recapitalization, debt restructuring, ownership adjustments, or asset dispositions.

For example, many investors are unfamiliar with or intimidated by the nuances of acquiring assets from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On the buy side, we have helped buyers understand and realize the advantages of being the stalking horse bidder in a “363 sale.” On the sell side, we have run numerous Chapter 11 sale processes, achieving maximum value even when only one buyer was at the table. Force 10’s expert team has mastered the complexities of bankruptcy and special situations sale processes.

Our real estate investment banking expertise includes:

  • Property-level due diligence
  • Structuring transactions
  • Developing a capital markets strategy
  • Working capital reviews
  • Market assessments, including individual properties and portfolio valuations
  • Fairness opinions
  • Financial modeling, including asset and portfolio-level cash flows, and waterfall analyses

Development & asset management

Force 10’s team has real-world experience in real estate development and asset management that is unique amongst advisory firms.

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When an asset is troubled, we can support stakeholders who have lost confidence in the project’s management team, augmenting or replacing leadership to define and implement a workable plan. To build consensus, we untangle even the most complex situations to identify key value drivers, allowing us to construct and execute a plan that creates the highest value outcome.

In situations that do not involve obvious financial distress, the conditions that originally supported the project may have shifted. Our background in developing real estate projects and executing transactions can provide an objective and informed perspective to head off problems and deliver value.

Our real estate development and asset management expertise includes:

  • Market research and site feasibility
  • Contract review and negotiation
  • Entitlement and Design Management
  • Budgeting and scheduling
  • Project Management
  • Financing

Fiduciary Services & Fund Advisory

The adage “time kills deals” is especially true in distressed real estate situations. As fiduciaries we can accelerate decision-making, resolve disputes to prevent problems, and take action to preserve funds and asset values.

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Clashes among creditors, borrowers, and other stakeholders, contract disputes, and allegations of fraud require a strong third-party fiduciary to protect the value of troubled real estate assets and manage cash. Our team of experts includes partners who have served in various fiduciary capacities, including as Chief Restructuring Officer, independent manager, independent director, receiver, and plan agent.

We know that inaction and temporary fixes do not solve problems and that “hope is not a strategy.” When acting as a fiduciary, including as a court-appointed trustee or examiner in Chapters 7 and 11 bankruptcies, we implement controls to protect cash flows. We then identify ways to create value, build consensus around a plan, and resolve disputes in a timely manner.

Force 10 often serves as a fund advisor while a workout or divestiture unfolds, a role that can be particularly important and urgent in situations involving alleged or actual breaches of fiduciary duty. We also provide independent, third-party reviews of essential reports such as financial statements, waterfall calculations, budgets, and draw schedules whose calculations may be disputed during a restructuring.

Our real estate-focused fiduciary expertise includes:

  • Controlling payments from cash flows produced by a distressed property
  • Managing the monetization of assets as defined in a settlement agreement
  • Implementing cash control measures and managing claims on existing funds, current cash flows and other assets
  • Managing the asset disposition process under a reorganization or liquidation plan
  • Overseeing asset recovery services to maximize value for various stakeholders

Expert Testimony and Litigation Support

Force 10 provides expert testimony in real estate-related disputes that involve industry customs and practices, solvency, valuations, interest rates, capitalization, damages, project/plan feasibility, and fraud.

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Collectively, we have decades of hands-on experience with real estate transactions. We draw upon that experience to identify the most relevant issues in a dispute from a real-world perspective and to construct highly credible arguments to support our clients.

For example, in litigation, disputes can arise among lenders in a syndicate or at different layers of the liability stack, often involving the way provisions in lender agreements are interpreted or how the rights and obligations of various parties are enforced. This, in turn, can lead to allegations of wrongdoing or negligence. Force 10 is a steady, experienced hand in managing lender groups and resolving inter-creditor disputes.

We also testify in disputes about setting interest rates or other terms for secured loans or whether financial harm resulted from real estate investment fund originations, among other issues. It goes without saying that our testimony in federal courts, state courts, and arbitration proceedings, is always supported by rigorous analyses. Our reputation for providing well-reasoned and rational testimony, with credibility and integrity, is unquestioned.

Our real estate-focused expert testimony and litigation support expertise include:

  • Case assessment, risk analysis, and pre-litigation strategy
  • Property investigations and forensic accounting
  • Litigation consulting and support, including evaluations of other expert witnesses
  • Digital forensics needed to support our testimony
  • Analyses of claims involving partnerships, joint ventures, and landlord-tenant disputes
  • Analysis of damages caused by construction delays
  • CMBS counterparty disputes, including breach of reps and warranties
  • Bankruptcy-related disputes involving avoidance actions and preferences, solvency analyses, valuations, interest rates, and plan feasibility

Our clients include

Public and private real estate owners/developers, REITs, financial institutions and private lenders, private equity funds, insurance companies, family offices, and entities originating and securitizing real estate-backed securities.

Real estate team

Nicholas Rubin

Nicholas is a co-founder of Force 10. Previously, he was a Senior Managing Director with GlassRatner. Nicholas has over 20 years of combined leadership experience in capital markets, financial planning, commercial real estate, and corporate finance.

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Michael VanderLey

As a Partner at Force 10, Mike leads the firm’s real estate and real estate capital markets practice and helps manage the advisory and litigation support practices.

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Ryan Gatchalian

Ryan advises Force 10 clients in engagements that demand expertise in real estate. He has over 20 years of experience in asset management, development, financing and monetization of real estate assets, including 17 years in leadership roles with the Lennar Corporation and its subsidiaries.

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Force 10 is helping us navigate complex fund waterfalls and settle legacy litigation. We are very pleased with their support and guidance.
Manager
Rothenberg Ventures

Let’s discuss your situation

Contact us for an objective, candid assessment of your situation and a conversation about how our expertise and track record of success could address your needs.

Contact Us

Force 10 Partners
Force 10 Partners
5271 California Ave., Suite 270
Irvine, CA 92617
949 357 2360
contact@force10partners.com
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