MFO wants to help clients manage U.S., offshore "issues and opportunities". Bessemer Trust has hired former TIAA-CREF executive Margaret Waters to manage its real-estate investment funds. She reports to Marc de Saint Phalle, the multifamily office's director of private-equity investing and co-head of alternative investments.

Waters is a 27-year veteran of TIAA-CREF, a New York-based retirement-plan administrator for educational, religious, and charitable organizations. In her last role with TIAA-CREF, she managed its real-estate-fund portfolio and directed its investment in international real-estate funds. She also has background in fixed-income investing, including commercial mortgage debt and commercial mortgage-backed securities.

"Meg will play a significant role in helping clients to manage real-estate issues and opportunities both in the U.S. and overseas," says de Saint Phalle. "Her extensive experience in global real estate has provided her with an in-depth understanding of all aspects of this asset class, and the expertise to effectively address asset-management, valuation and operating issues."

Over there

Though Russell Dixon, president and CEO of San Diego-based real-estate investment firm RedHill, claims no insight into Bessemer's motivations for hiring Waters, he says that high-end wealth-management firms and other savvy consultants see opportunities in real-estate against a backdrop of a weakening U.S. dollar.

"With the dollar weak abroad, a number of [real-estate-investment] firms, including RedHill, are looking to import capital to invest" in U.S. real estate," says Dixon. Besides seeking to deploy overseas investment capital in the U.S., stateside real-estate-investment firms are positioning themselves as on-the-ground players in Asian, South American and European growth markets, he adds.

"If [Waters] has a Rolodex with names in it that can help [Bessemer's] clients gain access to these opportunities, an appointment like this makes a lot of sense," says Dixon.

More generally, says Dixon, many investment consultants are keen to "increase their private-equity capabilities" in face of recent choppiness in the world's capital markets.

Waters' is the fourth appointment Bessemer has publicized in the last 30 days or so and the seventh so far this year.

New York-based Bessemer has 13 offices in the U.S. -- including a new one in Boston -- one in the U.K. and one in the Cayman Islands. It oversaw more than $52 billion across around 1,800 "relationships" at the end of September 2007 -- and about $4.3 billion of that was in alternatives and real estate. -FWR

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