GTIS
Partners LP (“GTIS”), a real estate investment firm headquartered in
New York with offices in São Paulo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta,
Paris and Munich, today announced it is expanding into infrastructure
investing in Brazil. Concurrently, the firm said it hired Eduardo
Klepacz, formerly CEO of Cubico Brazil, one of the country’s largest
renewable energy generators, to head GTIS’ new infrastructure investment
team based in Sao Paulo.
GTIS is the among the longest-tenured, largest private equity investors
in Brazil’s real estate sector, with some $2.5 billion of equity capital
deployed since 2005 in residential, office, hotel and
industrial/logistics developments.
“Brazil’s economy is recovering, which in turn has triggered an increase
in demand for additional infrastructure,” said Joshua Pristaw, Senior
Managing Director and Co-Head of GTIS Brazil. “There’s more need now
than at any time in the recent past for power, data centers, broadband
and other infrastructure-related resources, but Brazil’s fiscal crisis
has dampened the federal government’s ability to fund that buildout,
creating an opportunity for private sector investment. Given our
existing relationships with technology and telecom companies in our
commercial office real estate business, we believe we are
well-positioned to explore critical infrastructure opportunities with
these counterparties.”
Joao Teixeira, Co-Head of GTIS Brazil noted, “President Michel Temer’s
administration enacted a series of regulatory reforms to incentivize
private sector investment in Brazil’s infrastructure, making it more
attractive to firms like GTIS to participate in the country’s economic
resurgence. Incumbent players, including local construction companies,
that had historically dominated the infrastructure sector, were mostly
sidelined in the aftermath of the Operation Carwash corruption fallout.
We see tremendous opportunity in renewable energy (wind and solar) and
have been studying it for years as we looked to meet the cost and
sustainability goals of our real estate tenants. “
“Infrastructure and real estate investing share a lot in common,” said
Tom Shapiro, President and Chief Investment Officer of GTIS. “Both
require capital, and operating and development expertise, and both rely
heavily on an insider’s understanding of this market’s complexities,
compliance, and risk controls, as well as being able to identify the
most compelling investment opportunities. Given our long experience in
Brazil, we’re able to operate from a position of strength right out of
the gate as we create an institutional infrastructure investment
platform for our global institutional investors.”
GTIS, under the stewardship of Eduardo Klepacz, is currently
building out a vertically-integrated team comprising Brazil-based,
dedicated infrastructure professionals with expertise in development and
operations of infrastructure assets. The team will identify investment
opportunities in power generation and transmission, particularly
renewable energy, as well as technology and telecom-critical components,
including data centers, digital broadband, and cell towers.
“This is a unique time in Brazil,” Klepacz said. “The economy is coming
out of hibernation. We’re experiencing escalating demand for power,
data, digital storage, and broadband, and our roads and ports are busier
than ever. The headwinds faced by the government in funding the buildout
of Brazil’s infrastructure have created abundant opportunities for us.
I’m delighted to join GTIS Partners, already one of the leading
vertically integrated real asset investment platforms in Brazil, at this
exciting period and look forward to helping the company embark on its
next phase of growth. The ability of GTIS to operate and manage risk
locally but access capital globally makes it an ideal place to build
this business.”
About Eduardo Klepacz
Immediately before joining GTIS Partners, Klepacz served as Brazil CEO
of Cubico Sustainable Investments, a global renewable energy company
with more than 2.5 GW of installed capacity across eight countries.
At Cubico, Klepacz managed a $350 million equity investment portfolio of
renewable energy projects and led a team of more than 90 employees.
While there, he closed on a landmark transaction, the acquisition of a
$620 million portfolio of wind projects from Casa dos Ventos. He was
also a member of the firm’s Global Investment and Global Risk/HSE
Committees.
About GTIS Partners
GTIS Partners is a global real estate investment firm headquartered in
New York with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, São Paulo,
Brazil, Paris, France and Munich, Germany. GTIS Partners was founded in
2005 and is managed by President Tom Shapiro and Senior Managing
Directors Josh Pristaw, Rob Vahradian, Tom Feldstein, João Teixeira and
Amy Boyle. GTIS Partners has 94 employees and approximately $4.7 billion
of gross real estate assets under management. The firm pursues
opportunistic real asset investments through direct equity investment
and non-traditional lending activities. To date, the firm has committed
capital to residential, retail, industrial, office, hotel and mixed-use
projects in the U.S. and Brazil, and is among the largest real estate
private equity companies in Brazil. For more information, please visit www.gtispartners.com.
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