JER Investors Trust / JRT

About JER Investors Trust

1650 Tysons Blvd., Suite 1600, McLean, Va. 22102
www.jer.com | 703-714-8000 | Founded: 2004

Industry: Financial Services | Category: Public Companies

For about 25 years, local investor and philanthropist Joseph E. Robert Jr. has built a real estate empire, all with private investors' money. Having raised five private investment funds, JER Investors Trust, founded in April 2004, is the only one to have gone public, aiming to take advantage of a hot market for real estate investment trusts.
JER Investors Trust offered its shares to the public in July, raising $213 million. Its strategy is to purchase forms of debt backed by commercial real estate, much of it complex forms of financing called "structured finance." The debt products it buys include commercial mortgage-backed securities, hybrids of debt and equity called mezzanine loans, bridge loans, and preferred equity. It aims to use its staff's knowledge of the real estate business to find instances in which the market has miscalculated the riskiness of a given type of debt and then profit from those miscalculations.
There has already been turnover at the top in the company's short time as a public company; the new executives are longtime dealmakers in Robert's companies. Robert remains chairman and chief executive, but President Gene C. McQuown resigned in March to launch a business venture of his own. In September, Tae-Sik Yoon became chief financial officer, replacing Kari L. Doescher, who resigned for personal reasons.
The company's stock has done little for investors so far; after selling at its initial public offering for $17.75 per share, in mid-April it traded for just over $16. The company reports having no employees because it is managed by an affiliate of JE Robert Cos.

2005 Financial Data

Revenues: $36,418,000 | Net Income: $19,560,000
Asssets: $659,176,000 | Earnings Per Share: $1.08
Stockholder Equity: $380,570,000 | Annual Dividend: $1.18
Total employees: None | Local employees: None