Article Excerpt:
TWST: Please start with an overview of what you guys are covering in the REIT space.Mr. Feldman: UBS has a team of 40 plus analysts around the world covering public equity real estate companies in major markets, both REITs and C-Corps. In the US, I now cover six office and industrial stocks. I cover Vornado (VNO), Equity Office (EOP), Boston Properties (BXP), and SL Green (SLG), and I recently launched coverage in the industrial sector with AMB (AMB) and ProLogis (PLD). I plan to have full coverage of the sector, which should take us about a year in total to roll out. In terms of the other sectors, our US team covers about 40 REITs across multi-family, retail, mortgage/healthcare, and lodging.
TWST: Why the heavy focus on REITs?
Mr. Feldman: UBS is in the process of building out a global research platform
across all sectors. Early in this cycle, the firm realized that real estate as
an asset class was receiving heightened interest from investors around the
globe. As such, UBS decided to focus on the creation of a top-tier global real
estate team. If you look at our research around the world, we are the top one,
two, or three shop in every major market outside the US.
The firm's focus now is on building a US franchise on par with our franchise
around the world. In the past year, UBS moved Scott Crowe, the firm's global
head of real estate research, to New York from Australia by way of London to
build out the US team. Earlier this year, I joined the team from my former
position as the head REIT analyst at Prudential Equity Group. In addition,
Alexander Goldfarb joined the team to cover the multi-family sector after eight
years on the REIT team at Lehman Brothers, and Jeffrey Spector joined the team
from his position at Chelsea Property Group (now owned by Simon Property Group),
where he helped that REIT develop outlet malls in Asia and around the world. In
addition, we have long-time UBS analysts Tayo Okusanyo covering the healthcare
and mortgage sectors, and Will Truelove covering lodging.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AMB, BXP, EOP, GGP, PLD, SLG, SPG, VNO
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