The former chief executive of Deutsche Bank has teamed up with his colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald to launch a blank-cheque company to invest in real estate services businesses.
Cantor president Anshu Jain, chairman and chief executive Howard Lutnick and chief financial officer Paul Pion, will lead CF Acquisition Corp, a newly formed company to raise $400m (£300m) to invest in real estate services, technology and software industries.
Cantor is already active in real estate brokerage through its Newmark business, which it bought in 2011 for $99m. Through the establishment of CF Acquisitions it is hoping to buy at least one business with a value of between $800m and $2bn.
CF Acquisitions is the latest in a growing number of blank-cheque businesses being launched to seize opportunities in the real estate and real estate technology arenas. CBRE has recently launched an acquisitions company, so too has Tishman Speyer.
The Cantor team said it believed that the combination of its management team’s and affiliates’ financial services, financial and real estate technology, and real estate industry expertise made it “uniquely qualified to pursue acquisitions”.
“We believe that our management team is well positioned to identify and execute attractive business combination opportunities,” it said. “We will seek to capitalise on the substantial resources and the global infrastructure of Cantor and we believe the relationships of Cantor and our officers will provide us with exposure to a broad selection of potential acquisition targets.
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