Mr. Fileti joined Morrison & Foerster in 1984, and has been a partner in the firm’s Real Estate Group since 1987. He is head of the firm’s Los Angeles Real Estate Practice Group. Mr. Fileti is a member of the California State Bar, the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. Since 2003, he has been named a leading Real Estate lawyer in California by Chambers USA. Mr. Fileti has been named a 2007, 2008, and 2009 Best Lawyer in America in the field of Real Estate Law and is recommended by the 2008 PLC Cross-border Corporate Real Estate Handbook. He is also a member of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.

Mr. Fileti represents a broad spectrum of clients in connection with investments in and the financing, development, operation, and disposition of real estate assets. His practice emphasizes real estate finance transactions and credit facilities of all types (including syndicated credit facilities; A/B notes and participation arrangements; mezzanine financing; note purchase transactions; and intercreditor and co-lender agreements); credit leases, lease financings, and other complex lease and finance transactions; transactions involving REITs; acquisition and disposition of real estate assets, loans, and portfolios; matters involving hotel financing, acquisition, operation, and disposition; real estate joint ventures and other equity investments; and workouts of problem loans and problem real estate investments. He represents high-tech, biotech, and other industrial companies; REITs and clients involved in transactions with REITs; financial services firms; foreign and domestic banks, investment banks, and financial institutions; and life insurance companies, pension plans, and other institutional investors. Mr. Fileti has also represented clients in connection with real estate aspects of transactions involving utility station sites and corridors.

Mr. Fileti has particular expertise in connection with the lease financing of corporate real estate assets. Since 1992, he has represented clients in lease financing transactions aggregating over $2.5 billion for the acquisition, construction, or holding of strategic real estate assets such as corporate headquarters and campuses, manufacturing and distribution facilities, and health care facilities.

Mr. Fileti’s REIT practice includes such matters as representing REITs and contributors in connection with tax-deferred roll-up transactions involving the receipt of common and “preferred” operating partnership units; representing clients selling projects to REITs in taxable transactions involving cash consideration or REIT securities; representing lenders providing financing to REITs for working capital and acquisition or development lines; and representing REITs in connection with joint ventures, tax-deferred exchange programs, purchase and sale transactions, development projects, credit facilities, and other matters.

Mr. Fileti has substantial experience representing clients in connection with the purchase, sale, financing, and operation of hotels and hotel chains, and has represented clients in transactions involving several well-known luxury hotels and resorts in Southern California. Representative transactions have included the negotiation on behalf of a Hong Kong-based buyer group of secured seller financing in the amount of approximately $1 billion in connection with the sale of a hotel operating company and its chain of U.S. city and resort hotels and management contracts; the representation of a Japanese development company in connection with the sale of a golf resort in Rancho Mirage, California, to a company controlled by a hotel REIT in which the seller retained a minority interest; the representation of a Middle Eastern client in connection with the sale of luxury hotels in New York, Houston, Washington, D.C., and Aspen, Colorado, to a hotel REIT, a portion of the consideration for which was a substantial block of the REIT’s stock; and the representation of a partnership formed by the subsidiaries of several large Japanese corporations in connection with their investment in a partnership with a U.S. based group which had developed a coastal resort hotel in San Diego, including in connection with the sale of the hotel through a bankruptcy court-approved auction process spearheaded by our client as that partnership’s managing partner.

Mr. Fileti received his A.B. degree from Cornell University in 1978 with distinction in all subjects and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1981.