Holland & Knight Conducts 2024 Joint Venture Challenge Competition

CENTURY CITY, Calif. (March 13, 2024) – Holland & Knight recently completed its Real Estate Joint Venture Challenge (JV Challenge). The event brought together graduate-level law, business and real estate development students from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Friday, March 1, at UCLA Law School.

The JV Challenge is an annual event that was organized and conducted previously by Pircher, Nichols & Meeks commencing in 2013. In 2022, the lawyers of Pircher, Nichols & Meeks joined Holland & Knight and established the firm's Century City office, and this year the event was conducted for the second time by Holland & Knight.

The JV Challenge provides students from various graduate schools at each participating university with the opportunity to work alongside each other in a competitive environment to solve real estate joint venture issues similar to those they may face after graduation. Prior to the competition, students received a hypothetical set of facts, an issues list, associated letter of intent provisions and background reading materials. During the competition, the students worked in three-person teams, each of which negotiated two separate real estate venture issues based on the information that had been provided to them. Four teams from UCLA and two teams from UC Berkeley participated. Half of the teams represented the investor (the financial partner), and half of the teams represented the sponsor (the operating partner).

The winners of the 2024 JV Challenge were as follows:

• First place went to the UCLA investor team comprised of Trevor Atamian, Isaac Da Silva and Rob Schrader.
• Second place went to the UC Berkeley sponsor team comprised of Betty Chen, Mark Mabry, and Tiana Wang.
• Third place went to the UCLA investor team comprised of Etai Dayani, Duke Fishman and Avi Massaband.

This year, coaching was provided to all of the teams beforehand by Holland & Knight attorneys Alexis Alonzo, Susan Booth, Richard MacCracken, Ariel Robinson, Michael Scheinberg and Jennifer White. Steve Carey of Holland & Knight moderated the competition.

A panel of the following distinguished industry professionals judged each team's performance: Bill Jackson, Partner, Holland & Knight; Val Kwong, Equity Investments, Corebridge Real Estate Investors (formerly AIG Global Real Estate Investment); Bruce Rothman, Managing Member, KOAR Institutional Advisors LLC; and Patti Sinclair, Senior Advisor, Special Projects at Lincoln Property Company.

The Holland & Knight team is grateful to UCLA for hosting the event and thanks the event's sponsors for their support of the program: the Lowell Milken Institute for Business and Policy, the Ziman Center for Real Estate and the Berkeley Center for Law and Business.

First Place Team with Two Investor Coaches, Ariel Robinson and Richard MacCracken

Second Place Team with Two Sponsor Coaches, Michael Scheinberg and Susan Booth

Third Place Team with Two Investor Coaches, Ariel Robinson and Richard MacCracken

Judges Bruce Rothman, Val Kwong, Patti Sinclair and Bill Jackson