SF-based Iconiq buys stake in Madison Realty Capital

One of the country’s fastest-growing real estate finance players is getting an injection of funds from a money manager that caters to the elite of Silicon Valley.

Madison Realty Capital sold a minority stake to San Francisco-based Iconiq Investment Management, which functions as a multi-family office, with a client list that includes Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and other tech moguls.

Madison, run by Josh Zegen, Adam Tantleff and Brian Shatz, did not disclose the terms of the deal, but noted that Iconiq had previously invested in the firm.

“We look forward to expanding our footprint across the U.S., developing new relationships with top-tier borrowers, lenders, and developers, and accelerating the growth of our business,” Zegen and Shatz said in a statement. The firm has done about $20 billion worth of real estate debt and equity deals, and raised over $2 billion for its latest debt fund at the end of last year.

Madison made its name as a special-situations lender for some of New York’s scrappiest builders. In the process, it gained a reputation for playing hardball, getting ensnared in a series of noisy foreclosure battles. More recently, the company has sought to shed that image. It is now among the most active lenders in New York City and is expanding nationally. Last year, it completed 72 deals worth $6.4 billion.

The news on the latest investment in the firm by Iconiq was first reported by Bloomberg earlier Wednesday.

San Francisco-based Iconiq had $83.5 billion in assets under management at the end of last year. It was founded by Divesh Makan, a former Goldman Sachs banker, in 2011. In a 2014 profile, Forbes described Makan as “consigliere to Silicon Valley’s brightest billionaires.”