Mr. Joel Rothstein

Joel H. Rothstein is an international real estate and structured finance lawyer and Chair of the Asia Real Estate Practice of the global law firm of Greenberg Traurig LLP. Based in Tokyo, Japan, he advises investment banks, financial institutions, private equity funds, sovereign wealth funds, real estate developers, and investors across all major Asia markets. He also leads the firm’s practice in advising Asia-based outbound cross-border investors in structuring, implementing, and managing equity and debt investments into the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. With more than twenty-five years’ experience in Asia, Joel has structured, documented, and implemented a number landmark transactions and investment programs in the region, including the first rating agency rated commercial mortgaged-backed securities transaction in Japan, the first non-performing loan securitization transactions completed in Japan and in South Korea, the first comingled USD/RMB real estate fund sponsored by a Chinese financial institution and the first international style non-recourse real estate loans by financial institutions in both Japan and China. In the Asia outbound investment market into United States’ real estate, he has advised in transactions valued in excess ten billion US Dollars, ranging from acquisitions and dispositions, to financing, to strategic joint ventures, to fund investments, across all major asset classes and markets in the United States. A New York native, in addition to practicing law, Joel is also an architect and urban designer whose work prior to becoming an attorney included numerous architecture and urban design projects around the world, from Cartagena, Colombia, South America to New York City. He is a US-trained lawyer also qualified as a foreign lawyer in Japan and Hong Kong. Joel frequently writes and lectures on real estate law and finance as we all as on urban design and development. Joel has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University, Georgetown University and Peking University, and formerly an adjunct professor in the real estate program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.