Two teams -  Emerging Markets Real Estate Equities (EMREE) and Grosvenor - tied for first place in the 9th Annual Sheldon Seevak Real Estate Business Plan Competition, held on Wednesday, April 23rd. The competition, hosted by the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate, was established in 1999 with a generous gift from the Seevak Family Foundation and has been an innovative landmark of The Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate. This year, in a change from previous formats, the competition was intertwined with the Master Class in Real Estate Investment. In this Master Class, students worked on group projects with industry sponsors, beginning in January of 2008. The professors, Jeff Barclay and Camille Douglas, selected the top four projects and those group members competed for cash prizes at the Seevak competition. The Emerging Markets Real Estate Equities (EMREE) group, which presented a plan to invest in emerging market real estate public equities (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and monitor other emerging markets (OEM), included team members Nitin Jain, Fred Lee, Matt Noble and Yulia Yaani and corporate sponsors Debbie Harmon and Camille Douglas, of The Caravel Fund and Mainstreet Capital Partners.   The Grosvenor team, which made a proposal after evaluating the merits of the development potential of 241 Fifth Avenue, an improved site one block north of Madison Square Park, included team members Jim McInerney, Vitor Senra, Brian Shure and Lars Unhjem and corporate sponsors Craig Butchenhart ’70 (NorthMarq), Jay Matthes ’95 (Grosvenor) and Stuart Warsetsky ’02 (Grosvenor). The two teams split the first and second place prizes for a combined total of $8000. Third place ($1000) went to the GIC Real Estate team - sponsored by Mike Carp, with students Mark Lokhin, Li Miao, Jason Obenhaus, Ellie Sarmadi and Eric Tam - for their project which recommended a best mixed-use land site bid price and unlevered and levered returns on GIC’s potential bid on a 50,000+ sqm land site in Shanghai, China. The Equity International team (Sloan Bermann, Dave Dyer, Carlos Imery, and Gretchen Skedsvold) sponsored by Jay Harron, came in fourth place.  Their project proposed that Equity International consolidate its Latin American retail holdings by applying the successful business model of its Brazilian platform (BR Malls) to Chile and Argentina.   The panel of judges included moderator Andrew Jacobs ’96, Director at Angelo, Gordon & Co., Robert Berne ’62, formerly with Milstein Properties, Mark Lanspa ’90, Vice President at Goldman, Sachs & Co., Michael Lehrman ’90, Managing Director and Co-Head of the Real Estate Finance Group at Credit Suisse and Robert Stern ’88, Managing Partner at Perry Capital and Perry Real Estate Partners. This year’s reception was held in honor of Sheldon Seevak, who passed away in August of 2008. The faculty and staff of the Paul Milstein Center are extremely grateful for the time and support Sheldon graciously gave to us. Congratulations to all teams and best of luck!