For the second straight year, A&G Real Estate Partners, an advisory firm specializing in lease restructuring, real estate sales and auctions, won the real estate restructuring firm of the year award at the 13th Annual Turnaround Atlas Awards, a virtual event held from June 23 to June 25.
The program from Global M&A Network honored consequential, value-creating transactions completed during 2020 from the restructuring, investing and insolvency communities, as well as individuals and firms from the investment banking, turnaround, professional and advisory fields.
Beyond the honor for its body of work during 2020, Melville, NY-based A&G was also cited during the ceremonies for its real estate advisory efforts on three deal of the year transactions, including:
- GNC Holdings’ Chapter 11 restructuring and acquisition by Harbin Pharmaceutical Group, which won in the Cross-Border Special Situation M&A Deal-Large category
- Guitar Center’s Chapter 11 financial restructuring, recapitalization and equity investment by Ares Management, Brigade Capital Management and The Carlyle Group, which won in the Private Equity Deal-Large Markets category
- Tuesday Morning’s Chapter 11 restructuring, a winner in the Corporate Turnaround-Large category.
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“A&G’s real estate restructuring firm of the year award recognized the pivotal role the firm played in helping healthy and distressed retail, restaurant, fitness, entertainment and other companies navigate through the unique challenges created by COVID-19,” Shanta Kumari, CEO of Global M&A Network, said. “Their efforts helped save thousands of stores from closure and generated $2 billion in occupancy cost savings for clients. This was a momentous accomplishment in an extraordinary year.”
Over the course of 2020, A&G handled negotiations on behalf of 61 clients on 13,500 leases across the country, reducing rents on 10,450 and securing terminations on 950. Co-presidents Emilio Amendola and Andy Graiser — along with about 35 A&G executives, staff members and consultants — worked to attain those results.
“Our work at the negotiating table provided liquidity that was critical to the ongoing strategies of multiple household names in retail, including several that successfully reorganized under Chapter 11 and others seeking to get their occupancy costs under control,” Amendola said. “These reviews allowed our clients to optimize their entire real estate portfolio in a period marked by complete, mandated shutdowns, re-openings, closures and declining store traffic and sales.”
“I’m not sure there’s an assemblage of people that could have worked more tirelessly than the group of professionals on this call,” Graiser said. “We all got thrown into a crisis that none of us ever experienced, and we were tasked to figure it out and come up with best practices. We were all able to get through it, coming up with some special sauce that helped our clients survive. My congratulations to all of our winners.”
