Commercial Real Estate in the Wake of a Pandemic

Alan N. Tantleff is a Senior Managing Director and Leader of the Hospitality, Gaming & Leisure industry practice at FTI Consulting, specializing in real estate. He has more than 25 years of experience in lodging, gaming, and real estate investment and development. Mr. Tantleff applies his broad background and experience in hospitality to a wide variety of engagements, with a particular focus on strategy, business process improvement, initial public offering preparedness, investment banking and transactional support, and workouts and financial restructurings. Mr. Tantleff has advised boards of directors, Chief Executive Officers, lenders, borrowers, and other stakeholders on numerous high-profile hospitality matters.

Alfonso Munk currently serves as Chief Investment Officer of the Americas for Hines, a privately owned real estate investment, development, and management firm. He is responsible for developing and directing investment strategy for North and South America that is in line with the global views of the firm. Mr. Munk is a member of the firm’s Executive and Global Investment Committees.

Jason Nick is the Chief Investment Officer, Private Securities, for the Real Estate Investing and Servicing Division of Starwood Property Trust, Inc. In this position, Mr. Nick is responsible for the sourcing and acquisition of new-issue CMBS B-pieces. As part of his role, he develops and maintains relationships with conduit loan sellers and financial partners and provides credit oversight for all real estate-related investments for public and private debt acquisitions. Additionally, Mr. Nick is responsible for managing the due diligence process for all new CMBS B-piece acquisitions, including the utilization of REISD’s approximately 245 professionals nationally.

Steven Carvell joined the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration’s finance faculty in 1986 and is currently a Professor of Finance in the SC Johnson College of Business. Over the past 33 years, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses such as Advanced Corporate Finance, Capital Budgeting, Financial Strategy, and Investments. Dr. Carvell has also been an active teacher in executive education since 1990, working with almost every major domestic and international hotel company to create custom courses for hotel executives with companies like Hilton, Marriott, InterContinental Hotel Group, Taj Hotels, Jumeirah, Accor, Sol Melia, Le Meridien, Shangri La, and Peninsula. Dr. Carvell has also authored eight distance-learning courses through eCornell that are among the most widely demanded courses offered. He has held academic leadership positions at the School of Hotel Administration since 1999, serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2007 to 2016 and the Academic Director of the Pillsbury Institute for Entrepreneurship from 2013 to 2016.

Dr. Carvell has published numerous articles in academic and professional journals, including the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, the Harvard Business Review, and the Cornell Quarterly, and he is the co-author of “In the Shadows of Wall Street.” His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Institutional Investor, Financial World, and Leaders. Dr. Carvell has recently finished a major project designed to identify the determinants of hotel demand for U.S. hotels and another on economic and capital market antecedents of venture capital commitments. He is currently working on a project to disaggregate hotel room rates within urban markets and another to determine the risk-return characteristics of hotel room rates in major U.S. markets. Dr. Carvell is also involved with evaluating the effectiveness of hotel company business strategies using strategic benchmarking and economic value-added analysis.

Dr. Carvell has worked for professional money managers in the area of applied strategy in the equity market and served as a consultant to the Presidential Commission on the 1987 stock market crash. His consulting interests include valuation and risk analysis in feasibility studies, hotel debt capacity, strategic benchmarking, and corporate and financial strategy.