NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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.
