US and Middle Eastern capital backs new opportunistic investment firm

Called Henderson Park, the new platform is backed by US private equity firm Stone Point Capital, Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) and Wafra Investment Advisory Group.

It will target both assets and companies across all property sectors in gateway European cities, investing directly in real estate as well as indirectly through the acquisition of loans. 

The new platform will be headed by Nick Weber who is also a founding partner and who previously headed the European business at Mount Kellett. Weber spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was a partner and co-head of its European Special Situations Group.

Weber will pursue the same strategy for Henderson Park as executed during his time at US private equity and hedge fund Mount Kellett: acquiring and repositioning assets that are in need of active asset management and capex investment and often require a change in ownership or a repositioned capital structure to create value and enhance investment returns.

He said his ambition, together with the three capital providers, is to ‘build Henderson Park into an important European real estate capital provider and investor in the years to come.  Henderson Park will look to partner with best in class operators to invest in attractive value-add and opportunistic real estate assets in the UK and across the continent’.

Henderson Park is supported by a strategic advisory board that includes Steve Friedman, chairman of Stone Point Capital and former chairman of both Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Chuck Davis, CEO of Stone Point Capital, who was previously head of Investment Banking Services worldwide at Goldman Sachs, Henry Cornell, founder of Cornell Capital and the former senior partner and vice chairman of the Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking division and Mohamad Khouja, chairman and CEO of Wafra Investment Advisory Group.