New York real-estate investor Andrew Farkas has closed a deal to buy Centerline Holding, one of the USA's largest commercial-mortgage-servicing specialists, putting in $100m in new equity and assuming about $180m of Centerline's debt.

The deal comes at a time that opportunistic investors are targeting servicers to take advantage of the carnage in commercial real estate. Late last year, a venture between Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Leucadia National Group bought the commercial-mortgage-servicing business from bankrupt Capmark Financial.

Wall Street Journal