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Of CounselREFS is privileged to provide the talents and skills of senior industry executives to its clients. Individuals in this section are not REFS employees, but represent longtime friends and/or industry colleagues whose skills and capabilities we admire. Francis J. Decker, Jr., Of CounselFran Decker, of counsel to Real Estate Fiduciary Services, LLC, has been a part of the institutional real estate world for nearly 30 years. In his most recent position at High Street Equity Advisors, which he joined in 2004, Decker was the partner responsible for portfolio and asset management and co-investor reporting. In this role, he established and implemented policies and procedures, as well as directed operations. He served on the investment committee and was responsible for the firm's financings and refinancing of properties. HSEA is a sponsor of value-added real estate investment funds, founded in 2003. Since its first investment in 2004, HSEA has acquired 35 properties at a gross investment of over $500 million, composed of over 7 million square feet of primarily industrial properties. Prior to joining HSEA, Decker was an executive director at UBS Real Estate. During his tenure at UBS, Decker was responsible for a portfolio consisting of 35 CBD office properties valued at $3.75 billion; 45 suburban office properties valued at $750 million; 88 industrial/land properties valued at $375 million; 23 multifamily properties valued at $325 million; and 24 retail properties valued at $1.3 billion. In addition, he oversaw the financings of 15 transactions worth $1.3 billion, and 100 disposition transactions totaling $2 billion. He also oversaw numerous consulting assignments. While at UBS, Decker was a founding director of Mitsubishi-UBS Realty Inc., a Tokyo-based Japanese REIT management company, which formed the first Retail JREIT with a current equity value of over $2.5 billion. Additional positions have included director of financial services at R.M. Bradley Company, a manager of a $250 million portfolio for a closed-end pension fund client, as well as assistant property manager and director of accounting for the firm's 1.7 million square foot mixed-use project in Boston's Back Bay; and a CPA/senior auditor for Deloitte & Touche (formerly Touche Ross & Company). Decker holds a BS degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the University of New Hampshire. Contact Information:Francis J.Decker, Jr J. Christopher Meyer, III, Of CounselChris Meyer is of counsel to Real Estate Fiduciary Services, LLC (REFS) and is Managing Member of Centre Street Enterprises, LLC (CSE), a real estate consulting and investment firm. He has over 25 years of experience in real estate finance, investment and development in addition to almost 10 years' experience in corporate financial controls and treasury operations. Meyer's experience in institutional real estate investment spans the last 20 years. In 1987 he joined a predecessor firm of AEW Capital Management, a major pension fund real estate investment advisor, as head of asset management for the Eastern region of the US - a portfolio of about $6 billion of development properties of all types. During this period, he was corporate expert for the company's hotel and apartment investments. In 1993, Meyer was reassigned as portfolio manager for a troubled commingled fund of over $2 billion of developmental properties. In addition to the usual property types, this fund held major tracts of land in various stages of entitlement and included a number of large-scale developments. As he restructured and ultimately liquidated this fund over time, he took on other portfolio management and troubleshooting assignments. One of the portfolios in his purview was a substantial group of senior assisted living projects, with properties throughout the United States. Prior to joining AEW's predecessor, he was Chief Operating Officer of two development firms – an apartment developer headquartered in suburban Detroit and a regional developer in Tulsa, OK. Before that, he was Chief Financial Officer of Ford Motor Land Development Corporation, developer of the 275-acre Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, MI and the Renaissance Center, a major landmark on the river in downtown Detroit which now houses General Motors' headquarters. After retiring from AEW, Meyer formed CSE, which has a consulting practice focusing on portfolio and asset management, particularly for troubled properties. Two of his major clients have been a construction company which expanded into real estate development and investment and an estate which had significant hotel, apartment and office holdings. His responsibilities included valuing these properties and developing and executing business plans for them. Mr. Meyer is a licensed real estate broker in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the National Council of Real Estate Fiduciaries (NCREIF), where he is past chair of the Portfolio Management Committee. He is an instructor at NCREIF's “Nuts and Bolts of Institutional Real Estate Investment” seminar, and has made presentations at NCREIF , the National Multi-housing Council and the MIT Center for Real Estate. He holds a BA degree from Princeton University Magna Cum Laude and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Margaret M. Fite, ConsultantMargaret M. Fite, CPA, specializes in providing accounting, financial analysis and reporting, and performance measurement services to institutional real state investors, money managers and industry service providers. Fite is the former director of accounting and financial reporting at the $60 billion State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. During her tenure, the real estate portfolio went through both a substantial acquisition phase, tripling in size when it grew from $1.75 billion to over $6.5 billion during a five-year period; followed by a profit harvesting/repositioning phase, during which the value of the portfolio declined to $4.8 billion. Fite was responsible for the financial operations of this dynamic real estate investment portfolio, which included partnership and direct ownership interests in office, industrial, apartment and retail properties, in addition to separate-account and commingled-fund interests in timberland, farmland and international real estate investments. Additionally, Fite was responsible for the performance reporting for the Plan’s $350 million REIT portfolio. Managing the financial operations of the real estate investment portfolio entailed the oversight of the investment performance analysis, portfolio modeling, treasury management, lease administration and financial reporting, as well as budgeting, forecasting and audit functions. Prior to taking on the director role, Fite held several other investment management positions for the Plan, including that of senior investment management officer. In this role, Fite developed and coordinated the budgeting process for the real estate investment portfolio among third-party fee managers and joint-venture partners; established internal controls; and developed performance attribution reporting, including calculating investment composites and related performance. Fite has served as a member of the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), where she participated in the Research, Accounting and Performance Measurement Committees (1997–2005) and served on the Board of Directors (2002–2003). Fite holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from The Ohio State University, where she was an accounting major. Contact Information:Margaret M. “Missy” Fite |