John H. Sweeney
Partner, Chief Operating Officer
Series 7, 63, 24
Mr. Sweeney is the Chief Operating Officer and Head of Project Management at Park Madison Partners. In this capacity, he works with Park Madison’s senior principals in providing capital raising and advisory services to the firm’s commercial real estate clients, and also leads various business development and management initiatives. Since joining Park Madison in 2012, Mr. Sweeney has worked on 40+ private placement assignments representing over $20 billion of capital, including closed-end funds, open-end funds, separate accounts, programmatic joint ventures, and portfolio recapitalizations. Mr. Sweeney is also the primary author of Park Madison Perspectives, the firm’s annual market outlook publication, and leads the production of Real Estate Capital, an institutional real estate podcast hosted by the firm’s founder Nancy Lashine.
Prior to joining Park Madison Partners in 2012, Mr. Sweeney was an Analyst at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
Mr. Sweeney received a B.S. from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. He is a CFA charterholder.
Questions
& Answers
What differentiates Park Madison from other placement firms?
We are completely independent, employee-owned, with no other lines of business other than real estate private placement. As such, we’ve been able to build our team and choose our clients very strategically and deliberately over the years. There’s no pressure to accept assignments just to have a full roster of products. Investors know that when we bring them an offering, we have real conviction in the team and investment strategy. Having that kind of reputation provides formidable competitive advantages not only for Park Madison, but also the clients who partner with us.
What are the biggest challenges for real estate sponsors seeking access to institutional capital?
Institutional portfolios are just very mature today, and most investors prefer to re-up with incumbent managers. So the bar for adding new managers is very high, particularly for closed-end funds. To succeed in this environment, real estate sponsors need to consider their value proposition to investors and what exposure they can provide that incumbent managers cannot. That could be unique access to niche or specialty property types, deal sourcing advantages, or perhaps an innovative way to achieve alpha. But the barriers to entry in the fund space are certainly much higher than they’ve ever been, which is why we see more real estate sponsors pursuing alternative private capital solutions such as recapitalizations, programmatic joint ventures, and continuation vehicles.
What was your first career aspiration as a child?
Archaeologist! The area of Tennessee I grew up in held troves of fossils from prehistoric oceans, mostly crinoids. I became obsessed and collected thousands of them. But the more my collection grew the more it became apparent that my findings were worth approximately zero dollars, and took up far too much space in our garage. So I abandoned my archaeological pursuits, and buried my loot where it would remain safe and secure until my return…