Barcelona Meeting Point

John Carrafiell is Global Co-Head of Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing (MSREI), an industry leader with over $80 billion in assets under management in a range of funds and strategies from Core to Opportunistic. John is also President of the Morgan Stanley Real Estate Special Situations III, a $6 billion, market leading, open-ended global real estate fund, started in 2006.
John, based in London since 1989, has been at Morgan Stanley for his entire career since graduating with a BA from Yale University in 1987. From 2005-2007, he was Global Co-Head of Morgan Stanley Real Estate, encompassing principal investing and investment banking and a member of the Global Investment Banking Division’s Operating Committee. In March 2007, John was made Global Co-Head of MSREI within the Investment Management Division.
John is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute, a director of the Management Board of European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA), and a director of leading real estate companies including: Multi Corporation, Deutsche Immobilien Chancen, Grupo Lar and Canary Wharf, where is he Chairman of the audit committee.

John Carrafiell is the Head of Morgan Stanley’s European Real Estate Group and Managing Director of the Firm. John is a member of the 6-person European IBD Operating Committee, which is responsible for the management of the Firm’s Investment Banking Division in Europe. John is also a member of the Investment Committee of the Morgan Stanley Real Estate Funds (MSREF), the Firm’s private equity business, which has acquired $23 billion of assets. He joined Morgan Stanley in the New York office from Yale University in 1987, moved to the Firm’s London office in 1989, initiated MSREF’s European investment programme in 1994 as Director of Acquisitions (Europe), became Head of the European Real Estate Group in 1995, and was named Managing Director and member of the European IBD Operating Committee in 1999.

Morgan Stanley has been one of the leading players in European real estate for more than a decade, having completed more than 100 assignments valued at over $85 billions. In the last two years alone, the Firm raised or committed over $15 billion of debt and equity capital for its European real estate clients.

In the year 2001, Morgan Stanley ranked No 1 in European real estate mergers and acquisitions, No 1 in European real estate mortgage-backed securities and have a leadership position in the European real estate public and private equity markets, mortgage lending and acquisition finance.

John is Director of Canary Wharf Group plc, where he is also Chairman of the Audit Committee and a member of the Remuneration Committee. Canary Warf Group plc owns approximately £5 billion worth of Class A commercial office buildings and retail shopping space. John is Director of the Board of EPRA and is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute.

Nowadays, John focuses primarily on real estate investment banking transactions, where he holds relationships with many of the European industry’s leading participants. John has led many of Europe’s most significant real estate transactions, including the €1.7 billion acquisition of the RAS portfolio in Italy, the £500 million UK public-to-private of Saville Gordon plc (pending); €1.05 billion equity private placement for ProLogis’s Europ ean business; £2.75 billion acquisition and leveraged financing of Allied Domecq’s retail business by Punch Taverns; £1.54 billion securitisation of Broadgate for British Land; £606 million IPO of Canary Wharf; £3.1 billion of bond securitisations for Canary Wharf; $8.0 billion hostile acquisition of Forte by Granada; €800 million of transactions for Unibail, including M&A, convertible bond and equity issue.