Effie George Floyd is counsel in the real estate investments & transactions group. Effie represents her clients in a wide variety of commercial real estate transactions, including joint ventures and co-investments, complex acquisitions and dispositions, recapitalizations, mortgage and mezzanine financings and development projects. Effie has a depth of experience in negotiating joint venture and preferred equity arrangements and regularly represents institutional investors, investment managers, private equity funds and financial institutions in implementing their real estate investment strategies. Effie’s work spans across a variety of real estate asset classes, including office, life science, multifamily and industrial, as well as timber and agricultural investments and non-traditional real estate asset classes such as single family rental. Effie has experience both domestically and internationally and has represented clients in real estate investments around the world.
Experience
- Ongoing representation of a global private markets investment manager in the recapitalization of more than $3 billion of office, industrial and multi-family real estate assets located throughout the United States, typically structured through joint venture arrangements, and the development, financing and disposition of such assets.
- Representation of a global investment firm in a $1.7 billion recapitalization of a Class-A office asset located in Times Square in New York City, including implementing a multi-tier joint venture structure, incorporating a preferred equity position, and negotiating mortgage financing and multiple tiers of mezzanine financing.
- Representation of a sovereign wealth fund in their acquisition of timber and agricultural assets world-wide, with a total investment commitment of over $1 billion.
- Ongoing representation of a global investment manager in the acquisition and development of biomedical and life sciences buildings and campuses, both stabilized and under development, in Cambridge, San Francisco and San Diego including the acquisition of development rights, totaling approx. $1 billion in investments.
- Representation of the investment manager of a major university in the sale of a 95% interest in a ground lease of assets in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a purchase price of $1.15 billion.
- Ongoing representation of a special situations private equity fund in the negotiation of programmatic joint venture arrangements with regional and national operating partners to acquire, develop, lease, finance and sell agricultural assets throughout the US, including vineyards, almond orchards and citrus groves in California, apple orchards in Washington, and various farm and rangeland properties in Florida.
- Negotiation of bespoke agricultural contracts and agreements, including crop off-take contracts and licenses to grow, harvest and sell patented crop varieties.
- Representation of a private equity firm in the acquisition of a prominent wine company, including six wineries and 600 acres of vineyards in California and Washington, and representation in follow-on acquisitions of two additional wine companies, for a total acquisition of more than 1,000 vineyard acres and nearly $1 billion in value, and the first- and second-lien financing and refinancing of such assets.
- Ongoing representation of an international real estate investor in the negotiation of a multi-tier joint venture structures to acquire portfolios of real estate assets in the secondary market.
- Representation of an international life sciences real estate operator in its acquisition of a prime parcel in the Boston area for development into a mixed-use campus consisting of office and laboratory space.
- Representation of the investment advisor of a prominent university endowment in the acquisition of an interest in a casino in Las Vegas through a complex, multi-tier joint venture structure.
- Representation of a prominent bottling company in its acquisition of manufacturing and distribution facilities in Florida.
- Representation of the parent company of a prominent retail chain in the acquisition of a new headquarters facility in Massachusetts.
- Pro bono representation of Pine Street Inn in its acquisition, structuring and redevelopment of properties in Brookline, Massachusetts using equity, private construction financing and tax credit investment structures.
- Pro bono representation of asylum seekers, including preparation of applications for asylum, representation at USCIS hearings and in the immigration court.