Daniel Palmier: Founder & CEO
Daniel Palmier is an accomplished CEO and passionate philanthropist with a holistic approach that includes both local and international causes.
For Mr. Palmier, there is a strong connection between his professional and philanthropic work. With a successful track record in the field of real estate finance, he has built several companies from the ground up. His gift for understanding how to create tremendous value and investor returns has enabled his support for a wide variety of charitable causes and organizations.
Professional Life
Currently, Daniel Palmier is the Founder and CEO of UC Funds. He has over 30 years of experience in real estate investment and development, managing over $100 billion of debt and equity capital solutions. Throughout his career, he has forged strong relationships with leading global investors, real estate entrepreneurs, and international brokerage firms. Mr. Palmier’s success extends from expansion of institutional capital companies to creating new funds from the ground up.
UC Funds manages capital for a diverse group of investors, institutions, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds. To date, UC Funds has originated over $4 billion with substantial returns for their investment partners and they anticipate originating billions annually moving into the future. This track record has made UC Funds an internationally acclaimed specialty finance company.
Under Palmier’s leadership, UC Funds is recognized among the most sophisticated financial partners in the commercial real estate industry, celebrated for consistent, reliable, and quick delivery of highly creative capital solutions. UC Funds offers a full suite of debt and equity solutions including bridge loans, mezzanine financing, equity, and permanent loans.
Mr. Palmier developed UC Funds with a diligent investment and asset management process as the “backbone” of his strategy. He has built unrivaled in-house technologies and is in partnership with key consultants that deliver significant efficiencies and scalability. UC Funds’ robust pipeline across all asset classes reflects both an entrepreneurial lens towards deal structuring and ensuring the success of sponsors.
Before founding UC Funds in 2010, Mr. Palmier was Founder and CEO of Potomac Realty Capital, where he originated investments of over $4 billion. Prior to Potomac, as Executive Vice President at Arbor Realty Trust (NYSE: “ABR”), he led the company through a $120 million equity raise, Arbor’s first CDO issuance and their IPO in 2004. At Arbor, Palmier oversaw $40 billion of credit, risk, and asset management. Earlier in his career, Mr. Palmier managed $20 billion of investments in publicly traded limited partnerships and was responsible for all aspects of real estate at Lehman Brothers Holdings.
Mr. Palmier holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Science in Real Estate from New York University. He is a frequent speaker and involved with CREFC, Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), Urban Land Institute (ULI), and many other associations and commercial real estate forums.
Philanthropy
Beyond his corporate achievements, Mr. Palmier is deeply committed to philanthropy through the ONE Foundation, which he founded to support initiatives that improve the quality of life for people in local and global communities. More information about the ONE Foundation: https://theonefoundation.com/
