ICO Team Members

Saman Shams, Managing Director

Saman Shams serves as a Managing Director at ICO and oversees ICO’s Strategic Venture Group.

Mr. Shams has more than 12 years of experience in Real Estate Investment Banking, Private Equity and Hedge Funds, respectively. His primary responsibilities include, but are not limited to, ICO’s investment strategy, institutional capital raising, structure and management, underwriting, business development and negotiations. Mr. Shams is also responsible for sourcing and establishing new transactions.  Mr. Shams has oversight of all private equity and institutional capital (equity and debt) relationships. To this end, he cultivates, develops and maintains relationships with real estate private equity funds, high net worth individuals, hedge funds, fund of funds, family offices and institutions. Mr. Shams currently focuses on the distressed, opportunistic and value-added institutional real estate disciplines. His career has encompassed the structuring, financing (leveraged loans, CMBS, high yield), acquisition, disposition, leveraged buyout, underwriting, valuation, pricing, and due diligence of approximately $26 billion in completed real estate transactions. Mr. Shams has participated in some of the largest transactions completed in the history of the public REIT space and worked very closely with some of the most well-known private equity firms around the world.

As a former Senior Vice President and Partner at Halcyon Asset Management ($10 billion AUM hedge fund), Mr. Shams focused his time and efforts helping lead the real estate group as senior executive of the group and structuring bank related buyouts and recapitalizations. Mr. Shams spent significant time working with the Federal Reserve and FDIC in various transactions. Prior to Halcyon Asset Management, Mr. Shams was a senior member of Credit Suisse First Boston’s (CSFB) Real Estate Investment Banking Group based in NYC. He focused his time on public / private REITS, developers and leading financial sponsors. Mr. Shams has had the rare opportunity to work in the distressed, opportunity, core and value-added arena at leading Wall Street firms, and as the operating or joint venture partner to other leading real estate private equity funds. His experience spans every significant asset type, geographic market and investment structure, with a focus on opportunistic and value-added private real estate equity investment. Mr. Shams started his real estate investment banking career at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin in Los Angeles where he was an key member of HLHZ’s real estate group for several years.

Mr. Shams was a candidate in 2010 for the RE Forums ’40 under 40’ award in October and has received the Military Leadership Award during his tenure in the United States Air Force.

He has been featured on several of the most prominent financial news forums and is a frequent speaker at Private Equity and Finance related conferences in NYC, LA and Washington DC.

Mr. Shams was formerly in the F-16 fighter pilot program in U.S Air Force (144^th attack squadron) and is a licensed private pilot. Mr. Shams was a Regents Scholar and graduated with honors in Economics and Accounting with an emphasis in Finance from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Mr. Shams spends his free time with his family, playing sports (tennis, soccer and running), flying and reading. He is also involved in various business, political and philanthropic endeavors.