Walt is the Chief Financial Officer and a co-founder of Avocat Group. In addition to oversight of financial reporting, he is responsible for managing client metrics and benchmarking, due diligence, and determination of restructuring costs for client M&A activity.
Walt has devoted his career to the study of how real estate is utilized by corporate and business users. During his career, he has managed an organization providing end-to-end corporate real estate services to business space users across North America and globally, including providing analysis for a myriad of the Fortune 500 as well as public and private firms of all sizes in fixed asset consulting, development, leasehold and fee acquisition, and disposition. Clients include McKesson, Radio Disney, United Parcel Service, Transamerica, Emerson Electric, Aetna, CoreStates Financial, Sprint, Philips North America, Spalding Sports Worldwide, NYNEX, PSS World Medical, Evenflo Baby Products, Kforce, Inter-tel, and more.
A graduate of the University of South Florida with a B.S. degree in Business Administration/Finance, Walt has overseen the outsourcing a complete range of real estate and facilities activities for these corporations, including providing facility strategy consulting, leased professionals, and partnering strategies to support and finance entire facilities departments to large publicly traded companies.
Walt’s areas of expertise include financial analysis, site selection, lease evaluation and negotiation, project management, market analysis, financing alternatives, build-to-suits, and fixed asset consulting. He has personally negotiated more than one thousand transactions and assisted with several thousand others in all 50 states and 8 countries. Notable projects include multiple corporate headquarter facilities ranging in size from 35,000 to 750,000 SQFT including offices in the Chrysler Building in NYC and a $22.5M build-to-suit with Walt representing the user in land assembly, pre-development, purchase, construction, and sale-leaseback. His team oversees multiple 100+ location corporate portfolios and has managed facility relocations of up to 800+ staff.
He is considered a leader in developing innovative operating cost reduction strategies, has been a guest lecturer at both public universities and private companies, and has authored more than one hundred published articles on the subject.
Specialties: Corporate real estate portfolio strategy, financial reporting, tenant representation, lease restructuring, optimization of facilities, cost reduction strategies, real estate market analysis, cost segregation, mergers & acquisitions, benchmarking & metrics, compliance, supply chain.