Daniel Alpert

Daniel Alpert

Daniel Alpert is an American investment banker, think tank fellow,^{[1] [2]}professor and author.^[3] He is best known for his writing on the credit bubble and the ensuing financial crisis of the 2000s, and his many articles and papers on the U.S. housing market, banking, regulatory matters and global macroeconomics. Alpert has been widely quoted and published in print outlets, including the Wall Street Journal,^[4] the New York Times,^[5] Reuters, the Associated Press, Bloomberg,^[6] Forbes,^[7] and Fortune. He has been a frequent commentator on business news networks, such as Bloomberg,^[8] and CNBC.^[9]

He is the author of The Age of Oversupply: Confronting the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy^[3] (Penguin Portfolio) on the effect of macroeconomic imbalances on advanced economies.

Daniel Alpert is founding Managing Partner of the New York-based investment bank Westwood Capital, LLC and its affiliates^[10] and was a fellow of the New York-based Century Foundation,^[1] one of the nation's oldest think tanks.

In February, 2018, Alpert was named a senior fellow in financial macroeconomics and an adjunct professor of law of Cornell Law School.^[11] Alpert joined Cornell Law's Clarke Program on the Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions and Markets, part of the Jack G. Clarke Business Law Institute.

Investment banking career

Alpert has more than 35 years of international merchant banking and investment banking experience. He has been responsible for the execution of many novel debt and equity offerings in the real estate and financial services industry, including the first multi-borrower commercial mortgage backed security (CMBS) issuance,^[12] the first CMBS issuance of commercial mortgage loans on property controlled by a single borrower,^[13] one of the earliest self-managed retail property equity REIT offerings and the only one ever to involve the simultaneous exit of a company from bankruptcy^[14] and the first self-managed multifamily property equity REIT.^[15]

Alpert also heads up Westwood Capital’s real estate and hospitality industry practice.^[10]

Alpert’s experience in providing financial advisory services and structured finance execution has extended Westwood’s reach beyond the U.S. domestic corporate finance market to East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe. He established Westwood Capital’s office in Tokyo, Japan and has spent a significant portion of his professional time since the year 2000 in Asia. In addition to his structured finance background, Alpert has advised on mergers, acquisitions and private equity financings, provided and/or arranged for financing for, and advised both debtors and creditors both inside and outside of bankruptcy.

Prior to forming Westwood Capital in 1995,^[10] Daniel Alpert was a banker and partner at Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. He began his financial career in the real estate syndication industry in 1982.

Writing, media and intellectual pursuits

In addition to his authorship of “The Age of Oversupply,”^[3] during the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath Alpert maintained a finance and macroeconomics blog entitled “Dan Alpert's 2 Cents”^[16] with EconoMonitor, a project of Roubini Global Economics which contains a repository of his real time analysis of economic events at the time.

Alpert was also featured in the 2010 winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Inside Job,^[17] which tells the story of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Alpert is a founder of the World Economic Roundtable program of the New America Foundation, a Washington and San Francisco-based think tank.^[18] In 2011, Alpert conceived of, and co-authored along with Nouriel Roubini, New York University Professor of Economics, and Robert Hockett, a Professor of Financial Law at Cornell University, a widely cited and debated white paper on behalf of the New America Foundation entitled "The Way Forward"^[19] that has been credited on most sides of the macroeconomic debate with providing a clear and concise explanation of the issues that gave rise to the global financial crisis^[7][20][21] and was a precursor to “The Age of Oversupply.”

Alpert identifies intellectually with the work of the financial economist Hyman P. Minsky and has worked closely with the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College where Minsky was Distinguished Scholar at the time of his death. In June 2104 he gave the closing remarks on Minsky's work^[22] at the Levy Institute’s Hyman P. Minsky Summer Seminar and has served as a speaker at the institute's annual Minsky conference.^[23]

In 2016, Alpert wrote GLUT: The U.S. Economy and the American Worker in the Age of Oversupply for the think tank Third Way, outlining policy changes required to address challenges facing the U.S. in the areas of high quality job creation, income growth, and income polarization.

Alpert was named a fellow (in economics and finance) of The Century Foundation in January 2012^[1] He is also a member of The Economic Club of New York, the Bretton Woods Committee, the Scholars Strategy Network and is on the advisory board of The Coalition for a Prosperous America, a non-partisan organization representing agricultural, manufacturing and labor interests on the issue of global trade. Alpert is also on the advisory board of the Cornell Research Academy of Development, Law, and Economics (CRADLE)^[24] part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Personal life

Daniel Alpert was born, and lives, in New York City and has four children.

References

External links

• Dan Alpert on Twitter
• "Dan Alpert's 2 Cents" on EconoMonitor