Robert Stiles and Douglas Hercher, former partners at Sonnenblick Goldman and among the leaders of the lodging group at Cushman & Wakefield, have established investment banking services firm RobertDouglas, specializing in the sale, finance and equity capitalization of hotel, resort and gaming properties. Hercher and Stiles bring deep resumes to the new business, having arranged or advised on more than $50 billion in hotel capital market transactions and developments throughout North America and Asia during the past two decades.
“We are focused on building a client-centric business in every possible way and delivering a new level of market-driven innovation and support to each transaction we undertake,” says Rob Stiles. “Our goal is to make the structured finance process quicker, more reliable, and more transparent for sellers, borrowers, lenders and investors. In addition to advising clients, we intend to become an industry resource by using technology more creatively to share capital markets data and insights.”
Stiles and Hercher have led the sale or capitalization of many of the country’s most iconic properties. Mr. Stiles, a founding partner of Horwath Asia Pacific (HorwathHTL), spent fifteen years advising clients from Australia to Japan, and was the founder of HICAP (hicapconference.com), Asia’s leading lodging industry investment & finance conference. Mr. Hercher was the CEO, North America, of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels and a Managing Director in Lehman Brothers’ Global Real Estate Investment Banking Group, raising debt and institutional equity capital, before joining Stiles at Sonnenblick Goldman.
RobertDouglas, with offices in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, has created strategic partnerships with Warnick + Company, one of the nation’s most highly regarded hotel consulting and asset management firms, and The Alberleen Group, a New York-based investment firm that specializes in the recruiting and hiring of investment banking teams and underwriting boutique investment banking businesses. “Rob and I are excited to have Warnick and Alberleen as both partners and advisors,” said Hercher. “Warnick’s reputation and world-class consultancy skills complement our business perfectly, while Alberleen gives us access to bankers and individuals with great credentials in the high net worth/family office market, as well as to their merchant banking and co-investment capabilities.”
The RobertDouglas team offers exceptional domestic and international institutional investor relationships, as well as the structured financing experience that comes from having built several of the most successful lodging advisory businesses in the world. In addition, the principals have indentified capital-raising opportunities in the public and family office markets that have never been effectively tapped by traditional lodging advisors. That is part of the reason the firm includes finance professionals with public securities and fund placement experience, skills rarely found outside of the top investment banking firms. In combining the capital markets sophistication of top-tier investment banks with detailed hotel underwriting and asset management experience, the principals believe they have created a hotel investment banking firm with unique capacities in an underserved market.
For more information, contact Rob or Doug at info@robert-douglas.com or go to www.robert-douglas.com.
