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Your Commercial Real Estate Insider guide. From profiles of the biggest dealmakers to skyline-shaping transactions, we bring you the deals, breakdowns and war stories that move the market — for insiders, by insiders. From bad-boy guarantees to CMBS tranche warfare to syndicator sins, we cover it all.
Each week, The Promote Podcast explores three of the most interesting and consequential stories in CRE, taking you well beyond the headlines and into the heart of the action. Hosted by the award-winning “Bard of CRE,” Hiten Samtani, founder of ten31 media and author of The Promote newsletter, along with no-BS institutional insider Will Krasne. Also check out our 3x/week newsletter for industry insiders at https://www.thepromote.com/
Hiten Samtani (00:03)
So one journalistic maxim we've always tried to honor here at The Promote. The crazier the facts, the straighter you tell the story. So here goes. Let's just simply list the elements. With the CEO as the sole full-time employee.
Will Krasne (00:13)
Penny Stock Company.
Nigerian auditor in the SEC's crosshairs.
Hiten Samtani (00:21)
crypto tokens.
Will Krasne (00:22)
Of course, defaulted seller financing. Twice, sorry, yes. A nine-figure public bond sweeter.
Hiten Samtani (00:25)
twice.
for a company with less than $8,000 of cash on hand.
Will Krasne (00:32)
and the ambition to build the largest mixed use project in Atlanta history.
Hiten Samtani (00:39)
Should we just end the pod there?
Will Krasne (00:41)
We report you decide.
Hiten Samtani (00:52)
Welcome back to the Promote Podcast, your insider guide to the money and mania of the CRE markets. I'm Hiten Samtani
Will Krasne (00:57)
And
I'm Will Krasne
Hiten Samtani (01:00)
A shout out to our sponsors, Bravo Capital, a leading HUD and bridge lender that lives and breathes cap stacks.
Will Krasne (01:06)
and Loan Boss, the best in class CRE debt management software. Yes, this is new merch. Merch. For the podcast. It is really high level. I don't even know what material this is. Is it mink? No?
Hiten Samtani (01:10)
I notice you're wearing a pretty snazzy hat.
Shout out to Caprate Craig, he recommended us doing embroidery instead of printing. It feels a lot nicer.
Will Krasne (01:27)
It
feels just like rich mahogany. It's fantastic. It is going forward just for this segment and then it is immediately going backwards. So.
Hiten Samtani (01:35)
Oh
yeah, look at that ten31 I love it. This week we have the, this is too weird to be real, tale of Forge Atlanta, a $3.8 billion dollar mega project with the most bizarro development team and history that we've ever come across for a project of this scale. we know ground up is smoke and mirrors even on the best day, but this is next level. We then slip into linen trousers and head to the embattled, sun-kissed shores of hospitality giant Aman
Will Krasne (01:52)
Something's being forged.
Hiten Samtani (02:04)
where the involvement of a mysterious international fugitive has caused all sorts of drama. And finally, a quick order of change into earnings called appropriate attire, as CBRE absolutely crushes the AI boom.
Will Krasne (02:17)
a monster docket. Let's start with the punch list, our signature rundown ⁓
This week's punch list is brought to you by Real Property Captive, the first group captive for mid-market owners. I am going to be doing this because I am renewing a bunch of insurance in Q2 and it's really annoying. So I would love to have a captive.
Hiten Samtani (02:40)
Check out their platform at rpcaptive.com to tap into the same insurance framework used by the market's biggest players. Okay, first one, your boy, Adam Neumann he's back. You gotta do what you love. You can't keep this guy down. You can't even bring him down. He's just unbelievable, touched by God.
Will Krasne (02:50)
Ugh, tremendous.
No shoes, no shirt, no problem. Investors bought 72 units at Flow House. Sub leasing office space didn't work. So what about buying condos in bulk and renting them out? Maybe that'll work.
Hiten Samtani (03:07)
At the very same time that a lot of these multifamily buys, obviously peaks are floating rate, all that. As they were going down, was rescue prep being needed for a bunch of these projects. Neumann at that same moment doubled the valuation of his company through another round from A16C. It's just untouchable.
Will Krasne (03:23)
I mean, A16Z, who had the dumbest fucking people alive. Thank God. They're not going to learn about any of this because the market reason doesn't look backwards. Go. Honestly, I really picked this for the punch list because of the name of the debt broker. No shades to these guys, but it is the number four. This is all one word at beginning. The number four ever lending USA.
Hiten Samtani (03:31)
The Fart.
Ha
Can you spell it out?
tremendous. I also like this other detail where the brokers about the sales and the financing broker describe the deals as complicated.
Will Krasne (03:59)
That's Adam Neumann for ya.
Hiten Samtani (04:03)
Next one. This one's got a special place in my heart. Jared Solomon, a former dealmaker at Vornado Realty Trust, big mighty office street out of New York, was found guilty of all counts, convicted of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and bank fraud. This is in connection with a long running scheme to defraud Vornado over a decade plus.
Will Krasne (04:06)
Yeah, we hadn't talked about this.
Honestly,
this is like kind of a good scheme. He reported up to Glenn Weiss, who's for NATO's long time head of leasing. Tsar. Yeah, the Tsar. And what he would do is set up fake brokerages on the other sides of his own deals.
Hiten Samtani (04:27)
Pretty good, let's talk about what happened.
Basically double ending the deal where Vornado is paying a company controlled by Solomon.
Will Krasne (04:44)
Yeah, and honestly, like, I think you could have gotten away with it forever. You just got too greedy. He stole what, nine and a half million bucks?
Hiten Samtani (04:49)
Thank you.
9.5
million over 14 years. lot of the activity was around digital signage, which obviously New York City is a very important asset class. And 1540 Broadway was the epicenter of this.
Will Krasne (05:02)
the subject of High Rise by Jerry Adler, which is one of my favorite real estate books of all time. And this billboard is hugely prominent. If you've been through Times Square, you absolutely know what it is.
Hiten Samtani (05:12)
This heart of the bow tie. This is prime Maine and Maine, basically.
Will Krasne (05:15)
Yeah,
and it's one of these things where these signs are millions of dollars a year and so the leasing commissions on these are massive. so think about the guy was stealing $700,000 a year for 15 years and no one noticed.
Hiten Samtani (05:27)
some really good reporting here from TRD. LG, the electronics giant, used a media buying company called Havas. Havas did not use a broker, but Vornado was billed by a company called Margo Media. Margo Media was controlled by Solomon.
Will Krasne (05:41)
Amazing. Again, like pretty good scheme.
Hiten Samtani (05:44)
couple of details there. When Vornada started getting suspicious about this, they said, hey, something is off here. Our boy used burner phones to try to throw them off the scent. ⁓
Will Krasne (06:02)
I do love too that pushed to have some evidence excluded from the trial, arguing that his luxury home purchases could create a wealth-based bias, which is amazing.
Hiten Samtani (06:10)
Just incredible. The broader takeaway here is there's a pretty big gap between your in-house deal makers and then the brokers, the external brokers who can make in a good year, many multiples of these guys. So one of the long standing gripes that Solomon had according to his boss, Glenn Weiss, is that he would always compare his comp, which was reasonable by the end of his tenure at Vornado, maybe close to $800,000 a year. But he was really upset that brokers were making a lot more than him. And this was sort of festering in his mind as he schemed and frauded his way through his...
Will Krasne (06:39)
Yeah, because if you're one of these guys on the other side of his transaction, you've got however many deals that you're taking the piece of. It's just being an office tenant rep broker is like the best, know, because you just go around, get wine and dined everywhere, and then you just send your invoice.
Hiten Samtani (06:55)
said that being a land broker is the best gig in real estate.
Will Krasne (06:57)
No, no, no, I said that was like the dumbest people who would make the most money.
Hiten Samtani (07:02)
Fair. Next one. More AUM gobbling happening.
Will Krasne (07:05)
jazz hands from Blue Owl trying to get people to concentrate on something other than their redemptions and their credit vehicles. They're taking Sila Realty Trust, which, candidly, I'd never heard of, a private f- Yeah, for $2.4 billion, it's 19 % premium to the share price, low 20s premium to 30-day VW.
Hiten Samtani (07:17)
Healthcare Real Estate Company
I love that, say that again.
Will Krasne (07:29)
VWAP. Yeah. It's 137 properties, a couple land parcels, and it's 5.3 million square feet, but it's all mostly single tenant. it's two of these things with really durable cash flow streams, which we saw Starwood buy fundamental income. We saw Apollo buy into realty income. This is not dissimilar. That's a very credit fixed income like return profile here. And Blue Owl is keeping on keeping on.
Hiten Samtani (07:30)
sexy.
Is this just like a little bit of a smoke screen for the other problems? Or I guess you got to keep going.
Will Krasne (08:02)
You keep going. Move forward. Go. The two founders don't have any more margin loans. They're out there loaded for bear.
Hiten Samtani (08:04)
Go
Next one, let's talk about a lesser cousin of Blue Owl here. King Street Capital Management, which has popped up. We talked about them ⁓ a couple months ago in relation to the RXR vehicle, Gemini Office Ventures. King Street is one of the anchor investors in that venture. They've been sporadic on the CRE landscape, but they've done fat deals. I think they did a half a billion dollar loan for Savannah coincidentally with Blue Owl on Five Brian Park. And recently they were...
almost at the closing table in a Miami ground up deal. the developers told, this is like a 50 million Mez slug. The developers told we are pencils down. Pencils down. We're not doing this. Days away from the closing table. They pulled out of it. Blackstone was supposed to do the senior TBD on where that cap stack now stands. We also learned that King Street is restructuring the company basically.
Will Krasne (08:59)
Yeah, so they had real estate in a separate slug.
Hiten Samtani (09:02)
They had a bunch of funds that they would make their bets through.
Will Krasne (09:05)
Right, and so now it's gonna get lumped in with the rest of their credit vehicles. Three very senior guys there are leaving the co-head of CRE.
Hiten Samtani (09:11)
They
are obviously part of the broader private credit ecosystem that is getting so much pressure. Yeah. He said, we're concentrating leadership and investing resources on the strategies where we have the deepest expertise and a clear edge. It really sounds to me like they're de-emphasizing CR.
Will Krasne (09:26)
At the end of the day, they're selling money, right? And so there's so much capital and private debt in commercial real estate right now. You win by selling it cheaper, you sell it faster, or you sell it with less covenants and all three of those break my risk.
Hiten Samtani (09:40)
You got a feel for Mark Van Zandt though, he's the other co-editor of Real Estate, he sits in New York and he just did one of those splashy CEO profiles a few months ago. I wonder how that holds up now.
Will Krasne (09:50)
It's still on his wall, no problem.
Hiten Samtani (10:02)
Well, you've worn many hats in your glorious life so far. Pro baseball player, thespian, tornado remediation specialist. I want to ask, which was your least favorite?
Will Krasne (10:11)
first two, ugh, they were dreams. The third was a nightmare. Turning into a dream though. However, if you asked me a few months ago, I would have said Excel Monkey was my least favorite. Modeling out the debt tab was really, really annoying. Maturity dates, extension options, rate caps, ugh. My spreadsheets were beautiful, but at what cost?
Hiten Samtani (10:32)
Sounds like you had good ROI, but your ROIBD, return on invested brain damage, not so good. So what changed?
Will Krasne (10:38)
I discovered Loan Boss. All my loans, live, on one screen. No more, let me just pull that up while I jazz hands a capital partner. And the extension option tracking with automatic notice reminders. I used to have a Post-It note on my monitor for that. A Post-It note, a 10. Don't. I'm not proud of it. But the one-click DSCR testing, every lender adjustment, every unique requirement, automated. Ugh, my god.
Hiten Samtani (10:52)
in this day and age.
No more getting surprised by your own cap stack. Listeners, check them out at loanboss.com that's loanboss.com, and tell them the promo sent you.
How do we begin this one?
Will Krasne (11:14)
Just starting by listing some facts and then seeing where we go. So Webstar Technology Group, which incredible name, the way. It reminds me of a Homestar runner. You like techno at all? The irrelevant question as a listener right now should be like, what? Who?
Hiten Samtani (11:30)
Look, we have a lot of strivers in the audience and we're strivers. We're building media companies and other companies of our own. You typically start small and you work your way up, right? That's typically how you do it. Or you can just go balls out and say, the first real project of consequence I'm going to do is going to be a multi-billion dollar.
Will Krasne (11:47)
On
this podcast, we're not making judgments. This is all in good fun. We're not trying to be harsh on anyone. I want to be harsh on these guys. The fuck? This is all nonsense. Everything is nonsense. Everything we're about to say is nonsense. Let me just run this down real quick. So Webstar, which is a pink sheet traded company that reported no revenues in 2024 or 2025.
Hiten Samtani (12:07)
for those unfamiliar.
Will Krasne (12:11)
They bought a major site in downtown Atlanta from Atlanta food magnate Russell McCall. And here I have to say that there's a man in full Charlie Kroger on Kroger Foods. So we're just like literally dealing with a plot of a man in full.
Hiten Samtani (12:26)
composites of these guys. Yeah. Yeah.
Will Krasne (12:29)
So McCall sells them his headquarters. And again, this is like absolutely insane. It's a total option. He sells it for thirty four point five million dollars with a thirty three point seven million dollar seller note. And for those of us who aren't great at math, that's eight hundred thousand dollars that you have to get an option to go find the money to buy out this. Yeah. The rest of this debt. And it's set to mature in three months. Totally normal. Like three months for notes for ninety five percent purchase price. Totally normal.
Hiten Samtani (12:58)
Is this like a loan sharky thing?
Will Krasne (13:00)
I mean it's not a loon sharky thing, it's just like a food gazey thing. My brain doesn't do option math, but it's like selling a call or selling a put on something where it's...
Hiten Samtani (13:07)
He
gets to earn 800K in three months unless they miraculously pulled this off. Is that the way to think about it?
Will Krasne (13:12)
Yeah, is. And as we find out later, he's done this before. So the entity that bought it is a 90-10 JV between Webstar Technology Group and Urban Tech, or sometimes Urba Tech, depending on.
Hiten Samtani (13:24)
That's
their 10K. Yeah. Like mistakenly referred to it as Urbatech. Well, Urban Tech is a development company founded by CBRE first vice president, as you guys know, and brokerage titles mean nothing. He's an industrial broker and he started this development venture. He actually took the first shot at this site when he defaulted. These guys stepped in and the Russell McCall basically ran the playbook back.
Will Krasne (13:28)
Which is just unbelievable.
Absolutely ludicrous stuff.
Hiten Samtani (13:53)
I guess one big question I have is in the grand scheme of kind of scammy cities, like Chicago has a reputation, for example, do you have a sense of where Atlanta sits? Is it known for these kind of wildcatting schemes?
Will Krasne (14:06)
was
shocked this wasn't in Boca. It's just kind of crazy. This Webstar is one employee. It's got no revenue. What, $700 in their bank account?
Hiten Samtani (14:16)
You don't have enough faith in me because I actually pulled it at three different snapshots, all right? Cash on hand end of September 2024, $154. Cash on hand March 2025, $259. Cash on hand end of September 2025, $7789. So they've done a little bit better.
Will Krasne (14:19)
Yeah, you're the best.
I mean, this kind of reminds me of that Scrubs episode with Ryan Reynolds where Turk is like, hey, I've got like 500 bucks, you know, saved up. Like, where do think I should put it? And he just goes, wallet, money clip.
Hiten Samtani (14:45)
There was an SEC filing by Webstar with one full-time employee and two contractors. We currently rely on our president and chief executive officer, Ricardo H. Haynes. Shout out to Bisnow for some outstanding work on this. Over the last year or so, they actually spoke to the SEC's former chief accountant and said, like, listen, can you review this stuff for us? And I believe she said, unfortunately, it sounds like criminal activity.
Will Krasne (15:10)
Honestly, other thing boys and girls out there is that if someone ever gives you their full name and they're not like the same name as someone else like Michael B Jordan we can exclude him. I was introducing myself as William J Krasne like you should be really looking suspiciously at me.
Hiten Samtani (15:26)
We didn't even talk about the default. The most recent happening is that they defaulted on the loan from a call and they're now in the process of trying to extend this out.
Will Krasne (15:36)
They're trying to extend it through October 1st. It's like $1.9 million in extension fees and interest that he would earn over this period. And I just love McCall. He seems to think this is just fantastic. This is a lark. He's like, there's no need to think about foreclosure. There are hundreds of terms associated with this transaction. That reminds me when I went to business school and I transferred in. The registrar said, you should take this class in polysci because they, quote, have a lot of books.
Hiten Samtani (16:02)
What's wrong with reading books? Should we talk a little bit about the numbers here? When this project first was announced to the world, it was billed as a $1.2 billion project. Still a huge number, don't get me wrong. About a year later, it's being billed as a $3.8 billion project. Now, Will's not reacting as strongly here because he knows those numbers, right? But there was one more that I kept from him.
Will Krasne (16:04)
Again.
Hiten Samtani (16:28)
The expected profit is $4.5 billion and quote a 121 % internal rate of return over the next 20 years.
Will Krasne (16:37)
Okay, that doesn't even make any sense because it's 4.5 billion on the 3.2 billion dollar basis. Let's just walk through this, right? It's all nonsense, but why not?
Hiten Samtani (16:47)
We're here. The important thing is to take unserious things very seriously.
Will Krasne (16:50)
100 % of what so we're 4.5 billion dollars of profit on a billion dollars. So, okay That's a four and a half X over 20 years that rule 72. It's whatever what's 1 billion dollars at a 121 IRR for 20 years What do we think opus 4.7? 7.7 7 quadrillion dollars That is 75 X current global GDP
Hiten Samtani (17:15)
Just phenomenal stuff. look, obviously conventional banks are going to look at this and laugh Mr. Ricardo out of the room. So you kind of have to get creative about financing and they've done the most gen Z thing ever. They're going out to the crypto market and they're trying to issue crypto tokens, not only on this project, but another one in a town called Commerce, Georgia, where they were going to do these water parks. Did you hear about this one?
Will Krasne (17:37)
Yeah, I saw it. Bear Village. Bear Village. Because when I want to put my little kids in the water, I want to think of bears.
Hiten Samtani (17:46)
you
So they were planning water parks, a retail complex, a hotel and a 15,000 gallon freshwater aquarium. The problem is no permits were filed. Utility companies weren't contacted to ask if they had the requisite water. And I think there was something like, we don't have the water for it is what one utilities official told Biznow. Let's get serious now for a second. Is the play just basically raise this crypto token, pass it on to someone else and Bob's your uncle?
Will Krasne (18:09)
dreams competence.
Honestly, it seems like a pump and dump. It seems like something Jordan Belfort would be selling for... What was the name of his brokerage firm?
Hiten Samtani (18:25)
Stratton Oakmont. Stability.
Will Krasne (18:34)
honestly what this seems like because none of it even remotely passes the sniff test. What is it, PricewaterhouseCoopers? No?
Hiten Samtani (18:38)
What do we say about this auditing firm?
Olayinka oya bole in company.
Will Krasne (18:48)
Haven't heard of them.
Hiten Samtani (18:50)
They're a Nigeria based company and the SEC had charged it in another case with aiding and abetting quote, a massive securities fraud. We've certainly talked before about developments that seemed a little bit iffy and one sponsor seemed a little bit off or the cap stack didn't look quite right and maybe a more experienced sponsor or a more blue chip financier coming in. That was not a borderline thing.
Will Krasne (19:14)
This isn't Joseph Benanati or this isn't some sketchy Russian guys having money in 111 West 57th. There's nothing here. It's not even like that guy in Oklahoma City is at least like has done stuff before. Oh god yeah. You know like that's not happening either but like that's more real than this is.
Hiten Samtani (19:29)
So crypto investors who buy into these tokens, you could argue maybe that they deserve to lose their shirt on this if they're that stupid, right?
Will Krasne (19:37)
knew
what they were getting into. I say, let them crash.
Hiten Samtani (19:42)
The problem here is there is one very important real world implication, is Fulton County is issuing bonds on this. They've approved 220 million odd bond issuance on this project.
Will Krasne (19:55)
I cannot fucking believe that this happened. Yeah, and that's paid back from project revenue, of which there is going to be none.
Hiten Samtani (19:57)
That's taxpayer money, dude.
Biznet reached out to them and they said something like, Hey, if the developer doesn't fulfill their obligations, then we're not going to issue that money. Comforting.
Will Krasne (20:12)
I mean, yeah, of course, like, so I'm glad that the good people of Fulton County aren't going to have to like wear this. But I will say, too, what's really important is that when you're going to make four point five billion dollars of profit in this type of development, like this tip is hugely creative. It's nine point seven million.
Hiten Samtani (20:29)
This is a company that there has been quote, substantial doubt about its ability to carry on as going concern. By the time this pod comes out, Webstar may no longer be around. That is a potential thing here.
Will Krasne (20:42)
friends of the pod, let's all put in and take this thing over. How expensive can a hostile takeover of this be?
Hiten Samtani (20:49)
Yeah, in McCall's words, we still have a few hills to climb but all being agreed to at this time.
Will Krasne (20:55)
The hills
are being agreed to? What are we talking about?
Hiten Samtani (21:05)
I'm here with Aaron Krawitz of Bravo Capital. Aaron, $2 billion in deals, 100 % HUD approval rate, five years since launching. How do you keep that streak going? Comes down to our team. Our underwriters know what HUD wants. We're a pure play HUD lender, meaning everything we do is HUD and bridge to HUD. No taking shots and just hoping. When we go, we really go. You closed a healthcare HUD express lane deal in four days? Four days? Four days from our submission to HUD's approval goes back to knowing the ins and outs of the
Will Krasne (21:32)
and
Hiten Samtani (21:35)
Sniff's assisted living, feels like such an arcane world full of very complicated regulations and such a specific cast of characters that you really need to know Cole to make this work. Exactly.
Will Krasne (21:35)
so that there is no guesswork.
We're
steeped in state-by-state regulations and distinct, but we're not just about HUD. We a very strong, balanced bridge affiliate, Bravo Property Trust, we do have over 170 million in Miami and 125 million in Brooklyn.
Hiten Samtani (21:51)
We also have a on sheet.
Just finance. Out.
If we have conviction, we move fast. Thanks Aaron. And where can people find you? We're at bravocapital.com
We've talked a lot on the show about One Beverly Hills. It's a very confounding cap stack to us. Now being billed as a $10 billion project. Got the largest non data center construction loan in history. It did recently from JP Morgan, 4 billion and change, right? Massive numbers here. The developer on that is Kane International. The hospitality developer are our old friends, Vlad Doronin and Aman Group. The Aman junkies, people will know. The chain of ultra ultra frou frou resorts in remote...
corners of the five-star universe and Will's favorite hotel in Manhattan.
Will Krasne (22:54)
Yeah, back in the early days of the pod, one of the things that helped us get some purchase was my rant about hating the Iman in New York.
Hiten Samtani (23:01)
Yes. But now, Doronin company finds himself under a bit of heat. And here's what's happening. Whale Hunting, which is an investigative publication, it was founded by these two crack Wall Street Journal reporters, Brad Hope and Tom Wright. They put out a book, very excellent book called A Billion Dollar Whale about Joe Lowe and the 1MDB scandal and the incredible web. Yeah, incredible book. We'll put it in the show notes, but it's about this global money laundering web with the
Will Krasne (23:23)
Fantastic.
Hiten Samtani (23:29)
Prime Minister of Malaysia, that sovereign wealth fund, a bunch of Emirati sovereign wealth money. Correct. It was a major scandal globally. People went down in the UAE for it. Like serious people were put in prison.
Will Krasne (23:35)
and bunch of Goldman guys.
The guy Goldman, the British guy, served time.
Hiten Samtani (23:46)
Correct. This all came back to some very high-end properties in New York as everything always does, including the Park Lane Hotel and Witkoff and that whole thing. Whale Hunting is their new project and a couple weeks ago had a bombshell report. So what do we know about Benjamin Mauerberger
Will Krasne (24:01)
He was a money launderer, alleged money launderer extraordinaire and laundered billions of dollars. Yeah, that's serious. He laundered billions of dollars that were again, allegedly generated through criminal activities. ⁓ Using cryptocurrency. ⁓ man, they catfish American teens and get them to send pictures of themselves in compromising positions and then blackmail them.
Hiten Samtani (24:08)
I mean there's a red notice out for his arrest.
Pretty sordid stuff, right? Talk a little bit, pig butchery.
Will Krasne (24:30)
There's been several stories about those teens killing themselves after this. It's just absolutely horrifying. Like the most vile, awful things you can think of. And these scams, a lot of them are originated in Southeast Asia. And the people who are doing this are, in a lot of cases, victims too. They have to work 17 hour days under the threat of torture and rape by the Chinese mafia. It's just awful, awful all around.
Hiten Samtani (24:52)
Right. Mauerberger allegedly is the money laundering guy for some operations like this. And so he's got a lot of money. He lives or lived in Dubai as one does when one is at the center of this. He lived on his yacht for a while.
Will Krasne (25:03)
What is his name? Daniel. Can a hang just get arrested in Dubai too? Yeah. Yeah. So, well.
Hiten Samtani (25:07)
It's always been almost like international waters, almost like what Tangiers used to be back in the day.
Will Krasne (25:12)
As you say, it's like what the Continental is in John Wick.
Hiten Samtani (25:15)
is
a pleasure having you with us again. Exactly. So why are we talking about Mara Burger? At some point, Mauerberger got the hots for Vlad Daronan.
Will Krasne (25:25)
Yeah, we did this in an interesting way where if you're incredibly liquid, one of the best ways to launder money is through real estate. Because once the money, real estate doesn't have a, if you do it with the right sponsor or wrong sponsor, doesn't have ton of KYC going in. And then once you sell it, then that profit has a real, profit or loss, in many cases you want a loss, is generated through a real business activity and it's clean. And so it's hard to put a lot of this out.
Hiten Samtani (25:36)
There's not a ton of KYC.
Will Krasne (25:54)
And one of the best places to do it is in luxury, high-end real estate, because people aren't going to ask a of questions in a lot of cases.
Hiten Samtani (26:00)
someone's coming to you with $25 million and wants to be a quiet LP, you generally will not say too much.
Will Krasne (26:06)
Exactly. What Mauerberger did, though, is he purchased two entire floors of an Aman condominium in Bangkok.
Hiten Samtani (26:13)
kind of deal that puts you on the radar of the principle pretty quickly.
Will Krasne (26:16)
Yeah, it's almost in everyone's best interest to not ask a ton of questions and sort of assume that you're just very liquid from whatever.
Hiten Samtani (26:24)
Marburger buys into this Aman Bangkok. Then he buys a $21 million condo at the Aman Need. Pretty straightforward. You don't really call that person a partner. They're just the buyer. And the level of things you need to worry about as a developer is minimal in that case. At some point though, he reportedly traveled to Phuket with Doronin to scout a site for Aman's sister brand. It's called Janu. The Phuket thing never really came to fruition.
Will Krasne (26:28)
The one bedroom.
Hiten Samtani (26:50)
But by the time Dubai was chosen for a Janu hotel, Maurerberger reportedly found his way into the cap stack through some shell company that he used and he invested into the Janu Dubai project.
Will Krasne (27:01)
So that's where this goes from a plausible deniability, everyone's sort of off on their own to a you've got a real problem because Amon is backed by serious fucking people who do have KYC.
Hiten Samtani (27:16)
They have KYC and they have a lot to think about and they're as institutional as it gets. So let's talk about a couple of them. PIF, which is the Saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by Mohammed bin Salman, like real money here for now. And Cain International, which is Jonathan Goldstein's company, which is also Todd Bailey's company. They've been running amok on the skylines in the US developing some really high end projects.
Will Krasne (27:34)
equity, private credit, billionaires.
Massive stuff in Boston, one Beverly Hills as we mentioned, but what I would say here too is that these are not guys who just take anybody's dough. These are like about as sophisticated, about as high-end as you can find in the US financial system.
Hiten Samtani (27:59)
Cain was the Mez on the Aman, New York and had put in about 450 million in the Mez there initially in the Aman, New York and project level investment. At some point though, Cain and PIF invested $900 million into Aman parent company at a $3 billion valuation where essentially they are now Doronin very important partners.
Will Krasne (28:13)
Yeah.
And generally speaking, if you are very important partners, you do not want alleged money launderers who are adjacent to some of the most vile things in the entire world in your project with you.
Hiten Samtani (28:33)
So when this report came out in whale hunting, questions are being asked in the boardrooms of Aman by both Kane and PIF. How could this happen? How did Maurerberger's money enter into Aman projects that are obviously connected to us, carry a huge amount of headline risk and many other consequences?
Will Krasne (28:51)
One of these things about Amon and this type of brand is that none of it makes sense, right? But that's the point. Spending at the Amon New York in the little bar underneath when you have a drink for like $29, what you're not buying is the drink. You're buying this refuge from everywhere else. The brand is everything. If the brand gets tainted, like all of this goes away. Because everything kind of works as long as no one like thinks about it too much. And if you're saying like, oh yeah, Amon, is that the one that was associated with the guy who
Hiten Samtani (29:05)
experience here.
Will Krasne (29:20)
not where you want to be. So it's real questions. And again, like $900 million, mean, Bollie, Kane, they write big checks, but like, they're going to notice that. And like that goes sideways. That's a big deal. More importantly, it's a hugely visible investment for them. They have huge checks into like net least companies you've never heard of or Kik Clark Productions or whatever.
Hiten Samtani (29:40)
Yeah, but part of the reason they put money into these things is also their own brand building. We talk a lot on this pod about narrative setting and how you can control the narrative. The question here becomes, what do you do when the narrative goes off the rails a little bit like it is here? It's going to be a very challenging few weeks for Doronin and Aman, I think.
Will Krasne (29:44)
100%.
Absolutely at the very least the money goes back at the very least and even that's not enough in all likelihood
Hiten Samtani (30:03)
the money goes back, then you're copping to the money being there in the first place.
Will Krasne (30:07)
That's a fair point. I'm just thinking of how Ari Emanuel returned the Saudis money after Jamal Khashoggi. Yeah, a little bit. When you are making these types of bets for these types of brands with global reach, it's going to attract a lot of interest, but it's also going to attract a lot of interest in people who want to use your brand as a halo. And that is something you've got to be very, very, very aware of and protect against because one...
Hiten Samtani (30:12)
Didn't he just take it back though after?
Will Krasne (30:35)
unfortunate wire transfer can unravel the whole kit and caboodle.
So on happier note, we're in the pod by talking about CBRE really crushing their earnings. Yeah, the market didn't seem to love this. So we talked maybe two months ago about how all the brokerages got absolutely nuked, or the stock prices, should say, AI fears. And I think CBRE was down, ended up being 10 % or something, JLL and Cushman similarly. And the
Hiten Samtani (30:50)
But not their stock.
AI fears.
Will Krasne (31:11)
Market prices aren't reflecting the actual underlying fundamentals of the business. CBRE had a massive quarter.
Hiten Samtani (31:17)
their profit jump at 95 %?
Will Krasne (31:20)
Yeah, they doubled their net income. But the bigger thing too is they raised their earnings. They always want to beat and raise, right? Beat on earnings and then raise your guidance. They raise their guidance 20%, which is really big. We thought that the brokerages had gotten crushed with AI, but turns out it's the earnings that are doing the crushing.
Hiten Samtani (31:37)
This
is the thing, right? Whichever way the data center game goes, it could be the greatest boon to real estate of all time. It could be the thing that brings the entire system down. But in the interim, there is so much transaction activity happening, right? There is purchases, there is financing, there is leasing, and then there is facilities management. When we think of CBRE, investment sales brokerage is such a little drop in the bucket. And they are the world's biggest services firm and they are so good at jumping on the zeitgeist and they are.
crushing it in the most zeitgeisty part of the CRE at the moment, data centers.
Will Krasne (32:10)
Well, what's so funny to me is that everyone's like, an AI, it's going to be like the gold rush where you want to not necessarily be mining for gold. You want to be selling picks and shovels. These guys are selling picks and shovels and they have contracts for those picks and shovels. Bob Salentik said it himself.
Hiten Samtani (32:23)
Doesn't he look little like Kristoff
Will Krasne (32:25)
a
bit, But he said infrastructure and services were really strong in Q1, they've been strong in the early parts of Q2, and yeah, they're raising their EPS expectations by 20%, which is crazy. And again, the stock's down 6 % on this.
Hiten Samtani (32:42)
What is behind the disconnect between the way that these companies are actually performing and the way that they're being perceived in the market?
Will Krasne (32:49)
The market can be overwhelmed in the short term one way or the other by sentiment. I think that's what's happening here. These guys are gonna be involved in data centers. If AI ends up working, it's your point. These guys are gonna get paid left, right and center. And if it doesn't work, they're gonna have other parts of their businesses which are very lucrative that aren't impacted by this at all.
Hiten Samtani (33:08)
be in charge of the unwinding of the data centers which will be a lot of
Will Krasne (33:10)
They
got to go sell them all again. They get paid twice. Let's talk a little bit more about this meta plan. They're going to train thousands of fiber technicians to build out this data center infrastructure because it's very specific. So it's not like you can just pull in like a random person off the street to go do this. And they're going to do this for meta. Meta's got 30 data centers in operation under construction and they have more projects and planning stages.
Hiten Samtani (33:13)
You
Sure, what's going on?
Just
to put a number on it, each data center project is like a multi-billion dollar undertaking.
Will Krasne (33:40)
Right, exactly. so it's all of these things, like these services are great businesses. There's no capex to training people like this.
Hiten Samtani (33:48)
when AI sort of broke through, the people who got paid first and fast were the Accentures and the McKinsey's of the world, right? They're the ones who went and trained the workforces on AI adoption and they were putting out these decks and reports.
Will Krasne (33:59)
what they're doing right now, it's still happening. This is going to be a multi-year thing.
Hiten Samtani (34:02)
and CBRE and their ilk are basically doing the real estate version of that, right? They had to get up to speed very quickly and they just captured so much market share. And what I always think about with these things is the shifting dynamics within the firms. If data centers went from being, call it 3 % of your business to your primary profit driver. What does that look like on the backend for comp? What does that look like for the status games that we talk about a lot in brokerage as well?
Will Krasne (34:29)
It's true. But I think to the services aspect of this, you don't want to shift those out. Like property management is really sticky. This isn't property management, like facilities, maintenance, services and all that. One, you can only hire like three shops. Metta is not going to hire me and like five guys to go do this and like build this company.
Hiten Samtani (34:46)
to be incredibly institutional. You need to hire the CBREs and the JLLs and going to Marcus on this would be a little bit tricky, right?
Will Krasne (34:53)
Yeah, probably not. J.Lo and Cushman are reporting later this month at early next, so we'll see how those two go. But this is a great start for the big brokerages for earnings. So good for Bob. Big job, Bob.
Hiten Samtani (35:09)
That's it for the Promote Podcast this week. A mega project in Atlanta is showing signs of becoming a mega incinerator of investor capital and taxpayer funds. A fugitive known for money laundering for pig butchering scams. What a collection of words. boy. Has found his way into the cap stack for Aman deals, which isn't being received too well by the folks at Kane and PIF. And whether data centers become the next great real estate asset class or bring the whole private credit party to screeching halt is TBD.
but Bob Solantic and his merry band of brokers at CBRE are too busy making it rain to care.
Will Krasne (35:42)
Thank you again to our sponsors.
Loan Boss, you can find it at loanboss.com.
Hiten Samtani (35:48)
and real property captive at rpcaptive.com.
Will Krasne (35:52)
And while you're at it, write us a review on Apple, Spotify, some of those other services that I can't remember, but they exist. I know people listen to podcasts on them. ⁓
Hiten Samtani (36:00)
Stay tuned
for the swag store, which is only days away, guys.
Will Krasne (36:03)
Yes, buy some swag. It looks great. I don't know how many people watch this on YouTube, but like, yeah.
Hiten Samtani (36:09)
Here we go. That's a one of one though. That's the black tea that is not being put out. That's just for you.
Will Krasne (36:15)
very kind of you to do it since I only wear black tees.
Hiten Samtani (36:18)
Alright dude, I'll see you next week. you. Ciao.
Will Krasne (36:20)
Thank you.