NEW YORK - (Business Wire) Fitch Ratings assigns a commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) large loan special servicer rating of 'CLLSS3+' to Brookfield Real Estate Financial Partners LLC (BREF). The rating reflects the company's extensive commercial real estate finance and third party asset management experience. The senior management team has significant prior experience in the disposition of non-performing commercial loans, including bankruptcies and foreclosures. Although the company's workout experience has been primarily limited to protecting mezzanine or B-Note positions, BREF's senior managers average 19 years of related experience including loan workout experience. The rating will be used by BREF to name themselves as special servicer on loans where BREF or another investor holds either mezzanine or B-Note positions. The rating does not qualify an entity to special service a pool of conduit loans, only single large loans within a securitization.
While BREF has a strong commercial real estate background, including investing in CMBS, the company has very limited direct CMBS workout experience. Fitch will closely monitor the firm during its first year as a rated CMBS special servicer to ensure that CMBS specific standards are met. Fitch deems the special servicer rating of 'CSSLL3+' sufficient to meet the requirements of current transaction documents.
BREF is wholly owned by Brookfield Asset Management Inc., a specialist asset manager focused on large high profile assets with approximately $90 billion of assets under management. BREF was formed in 2002 to manage commercial real estate debt funds on behalf of large institutional and sovereign entity investors.
The servicer rating is based on the methodology described in Fitch's reports 'U.S. Commercial Mortgage Servicer Rating Criteria', dated June 19, 2009, and 'Global Rating Criteria for Structured Finance Servicers' dated Sept. 30, 2009, available on Fitch's web site at 'www.fitchratings.com'.
Fitch rates large loan commercial special servicers on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the highest rating. Within each of these rating levels, Fitch further differentiates ratings by plus (+) or and minus (-) as well as the flat rating.
Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'.
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