Overview
The Whitehall Funds are a family of private equity real estate funds run by the Real Estate Principal Investment Area of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The investing style of the fund family, named for a Manhattan street near Goldman's headquarters, is global and opportunistic. The funds invest in real estate companies, projects, loan portfolios, debt recapitalizations and direct property throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. Whitehall is best known for deals such as buying Rockefeller Center in 1996.
The Whitehall Funds have been struggling with weak performance and potentially big losses on some investments made at the top of the real-estate market. Its biggest real-estate private-equity fund, the Whitehall Street Global Real Estate Limited Partnership 2007, told its investors in 2009 to give it $1 billion in additional capital they had committed to the fund, according to The Wall Street Journal.
There has been some turnover at the top. The group's chief, Stuart Rothenberg, retired at the end of 2008. Three people -- Brahm Cramer, Edward Siskind and Todd Williams, now run the real-estate unit. They report to Goldman’s merchant-banking unit.