Kurash ventures into Mideast for ‘under-the-radar’ deals

Perry Kurash, the property financier, has set up a corporate finance company with four partners to focus on providing equity finance for developers.

Kurash, the former managing director of DD2 Group, has set up Real Estate Capital Group (Recap) with two of his former DD2 colleagues, Martin Griffin and Paul McCutcheon, and Dean Main and Alain Charbit, who were property advisers to Jack Dellal’s Allied Commercial Holdings, among other high net-worth investors.

The group will specialise in sourcing equity from the Middle East and the US for developments throughout the world and will also source other forms of capital.

‘We are extremely well connected in the Middle East,’ Kurash told Property Week.

Griffin, who is a former Merrill Lynch treasurer, and McCutcheon, who was a fund manager at Fleming Family & Partners, have both worked in the Middle East. An office has been opened in Bahrain, which will be run by Ahmed Salem, who has joined from Mashreq Bank.

Kurash said: ‘It’s a coup to bring a senior investment banker to a company that is so young.’

The group will also take deals to clients – ‘We will act as an under-the-radar company for deals,’ said Kurash – and aims to set up a mezzanine debt fund next year.

Two partnerships have been set up in Ireland to provide equity to developers – with Westboro Partners, an accountancy firm in Cork, and Magna, a firm founded by Michael O’Hara, formerly of DEPFA Bank and AIB Capital Markets.

Kurash said Recap had a lot of mandated business, typically schemes that involve $250m-$300m (£165.8m-£199m) of equity.

It is working on: two $200m (£132.6m) fundraisings in China for UK developers with Chinese partners; a South African infrastructure fund looking for $400m (£265.5m); a Croatian resort fund; a $400m Indian infrastructure fund; a distressed US asset fund looking for $250m outside the US; a lifestyle development around a Formula One racing track; the roll-out of the master franchise of Easyhotel in Germany; mezzanine funding for an Irish investor who is rolling out a chain of hotels; and two residential schemes in Turkey.

Recap has also formed an alliance with agent Seven Continents, which is based at Canary Wharf.

Kurash has a long history of financing property deals. Before joining DD2 – now renamed Bircroft – in 2005, he worked at Sol and Eddie Zakay’s Topland Group.

He started his career at Midland Bank in 1979, before moving to Dunbar Bank in 1986, where he became senior managing lender.

In 1996 he moved to student accommodation provider Unite Group as commercial director.