Evan Layne Leaves Newmark For Lone Star Funds

Evan Layne, one of Newmark’s top I-sales brokers, has left the company for a job at the Dallas-based private equity firm Lone Star Funds.

Layne took a job working with Lone Star’s head of North American real estate doing acquisitions as part of a team headed by Bob Ricci, The Real Deal has learned.

The broker, who got his start at Eastdil Secured, has previously worked with Lone Star. He helped arrange the sale of a multi-billion dollar portfolio of distressed real estate loans owned by Anglo Irish Bank Corp. to Lone Star in 2011.

Layne declined to comment on the move, and representatives for Lone Star and Newmark did not immediately respond.

Layne worked in Eastdil’s London office before moving to New York, where he worked alongside top commercial brokers Doug Harmon and Adam Spies. After the latter two left Eastdil for Cushman & Wakefield in 2016, Layne and his colleagues Brett Siegel and Jean Celestin jumped ship for Newmark, where they headed up the company’s investment-sales group.

Layne reunited with Harmon and Spies earlier last year when they joined Newmark, working on deals such as the $60 billion sale of Signature Bank’s assets.

Newmark’s capital markets group has seen some shakeup recently. In February, the company hired Eastdil’s Jonathan Firestone to co-lead the brokerage’s debt business with Jordan Roeschlaub. Around that time Dustin Stolly, a star broker who had previously run the debt group alongside Roeschlaub, went on an extended leave of absence.

In October Stolly and Newmark formally parted ways.

Lone Star, meanwhile, is one of the biggest buyers of distressed real estate.

The company, headed by CEO Donald Quintin, raised a $5.3 billion fund earlier this year to invest in distressed assets in real estate and other sectors.

“We will continue to seek value primarily in companies that are affected by ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty and distressed corporate credits … across different markets and asset classes,” Quintin said in a statement in July.