The joint venture practice is one of the Firm’s crown jewels, in that the attorneys in our Corporate Real Estate Practice Group are veterans of literally thousands of transactions since 1997.  We are very proud of this achievement because it is very difficult area, akin to playing chess in the future.  This practice plays to our strengths of creativity and being able to contemplate multiple possible future outcomes.  Also, most importantly, co-ventures is an area in which an experienced practitioner has a huge advantage over a real estate generalist, who is invariably a novice in this area.  Often we are representing the “money partner” (often an institutional investment fund, sovereign wealth fund, family office or other investor), which contributes the majority of the capital in a co-investment; however, often we are representing the “operating partner”, which generally is the developer or sponsor of the investment opportunity and is the “on the ground” sponsor or manager of the investment.  We have handled matters of this nature extensively, both for so-called “one-off” transactions, for portfolio transactions, and for platform-based transactions. These have included all kinds of structures, including common equity, preferred equity and mezzanine-debt transactions that are structured as preferred equity.