DLA Piper advises Ocean West Capital Partners on foreclosure, acquisition, and refinancing of Midtown Manhattan office building

DLA Piper advised Ocean West Capital Partners, a full-service real estate investment and management platform, and DAOL Asset Management Co. Ltd., a Korean asset management company, on the foreclosure auction of 285 Madison Avenue, a 511,000 square-foot office property located in Midtown Manhattan.

The transaction included litigation related to an attempt by a borrower to postpone the auction and the closing of a US$205 million new mortgage loan provided by IGIS Asset Management Co, Ltd., a Korean asset management company.

Ocean West represented the mezzanine lender, which was comprised of a consortium of some of the largest insurance companies in South Korea. The company plans to hold on to the office property for approximately five years.

“It was a pleasure to work with Ocean West and DAOL to enforce the rights of the Korean investors under the mezzanine loan documents, and we are delighted at the outcome,” said Dennis Kiely, the DLA Piper partner who led the deal team. “Our team has extensive, first-in-class experience working with Korean asset managers and investors on US mezzanine loan acquisitions, resolving distressed situations, and advising on foreclosures and related litigation. This placed our team in an excellent position to advise Ocean West and DAOL on the foreclosure and acquire the property.”

“We expect to see additional matters where Korean mezzanine lenders opt to foreclose rather than settle for additional loan extensions or a discounted payoff,” Kiely added.

Alongside Kiely (New York), the DLA Piper team included partners Heather Horowitz and Naftali Dembitzer (both New York), of counsels Neal Kronley (New York) and Alex Kaplan (Washington, DC), senior associate Robert Song (Seoul), and associates Negin Hadaghian, Avi Mediratta, and Nicola Hosie-Kingham (all New York).

With more than 200 lawyers in our real estate sector in the US and 500 globally, DLA Piper's market-leading Real Estate practice offers a full range of real estate services, including acquisitions and sales, single asset, programmatic and operating company joint ventures, real estate fund formation, public and private REITs, financing, zoning and development, construction and design, leasing and restructuring and workouts. The firm executes hundreds of transactions every year, ranging from billon-dollar-plus transactions to the acquisition, financing, joint venture formation, leasing, and sale of individual properties.