Gramercy Capital: Now Hiring! New CEO Cozzi Has Three-Year Plan

View Story On One Page

Print This Story

Share This Story

By Tom Acitelli

October 31, 2008 | 11:03 a.m.

New Gramercy Capital CEO Roger Cozzi says the commercial real estate finance company's bullish on the immediate future. But first! They have to hire some top people because of a management shakeup this week that saw the departure of CEO Marc Holliday, head of Gramercy's primary investor SL Green, as well as those of chief investment officer Andrew Mathias and chief credit officer Gregory Hughes (Messrs. Holliday and Hughes remain as Gramercy consultants through next September).

Here's GlobeSt on the plans of Mr. Cozzi, a Wharton grad and a former managing director at Fortress Investment:

First of these goals will be "finding and hiring the best people" to fill the key positions that have been left vacant by the reorganization of the management team. There will be "a bottom-up review of the business plan for every individual asset in both Gramercy Finance and Gramercy Realty," to be followed by "incorporating these plans into a three-year company business plan," said Cozzi. The third of the measures will consist of "being proactive" about making sure that Gramercy is in a position "to pursue any and all liquidity creation strategies." Finally, he said, Gramercy will "aggressively manage our loan portfolio and pursue asset dispositions" where appropriate.

Mr. Cozzi's ascension comes during a stock slide for Gramercy. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the firm's stock share price has dropped about 95 percent.