Cognitive Corporate Finance is delighted to welcome Lee May to join the firm as Senior Advisor, bringing nearly 40 years of experience and personal relationships mainly in Real Estate transactions and asset management.
Lee moved to Citicorp Real Estate in Madrid in 1988, where he originated and underwrote singular project finance transactions including the development of the Parque Sur regional shopping center and the Senior and Junior debt for the Castellana 278-280 speculative office project that became the headquarters for Repsol.
In 1993, Lee joined Argentaria as Director in their newly formed real estate business unit for development of residential and commercial properties, where he carried out multiple investments including launching Argentaria Propiedad, F.I.I., one of the first three REITs in Spain.
In 1996, Lee joined Hines where he carried out two mega-projects in Barcelona including 340.000 m2 of retail, residential, office and hotels. Other projects spearheaded by Lee were the award winning Pórtico office building and the iconic Zielo Shopping retail center in Madrid.
In late 2007, Lee returned to Real Estate project finance as the Managing Director in Spain for Westdeutsche ImmobilienBank, where he oversaw a 1.5 billion euro portfolio of performing and non-performing commercial mortgage loans. Since the sale of WestImmo to Aareal Bank in 2015, Lee has been an advisor to private equity funds and family office funds. He is a board member of Simplifika Asset Management, a residential developer specialized in high end build to rent projects.
Charles Thoma, founder and CEO of Cognitive Corporate Finance, said: “Cognitive Corporate Finance is a cutting-edge, technology-enhanced, Big Data-powered third millennium merchant advisory firm. We are Technology-Enhanced because we recognize that our brains need an exo-skeleton to work on a global scale, and we are Big Data-Powered because because with over 500,000 institutional investors in the world, if you don’t power yourself with data fuel, it is unlikely you will be able to retain all the criteria that drive investors’ investment decisions. On behalf of the whole team, we are delighted to have Lee on board. Lee brings a highly valuable experience and decades of personal relationships that will boost Cognitive’s capabilities in covering real estate transactions in Europe and the US, and joining forces will be essential to further expand the firm’s network globally and enhance the solutions we bring to our customers.”Lee Mays says: “The post-COVID environment will present a wide variety of opportunities in the real estate space, and I am pleased to join the Cognitive team, and look forward to adding value.”