Exantas Capital Corp., a real-estate investment trust, recently acquired a portfolio of floating-rate commercial real estate mortgage loans worth $196.8 million from an affiliate of the company’s external manager, C-III Capital Partners LLC. With this acquisition, Exantas Capital Corp. can continue investing and originating in commercial real estate debt to meet their goal of full deployment by late 2019.

The acquired portfolio of 28 loans has an average loan size of $7 million, which will improve company diversification in asset class and geography. Following the deal, Exantas holds a commercial real estate loan portfolio size of $1.9 billion.

CEO of Exantas, Robert C. Lieber, stated, “This acquisition furthers Exantas’s efforts to strategically and effectively deploy liquidity into high-quality loans that offer attractive risk-adjusted returns. The transaction illustrates one advantage provided by our sponsor C-III Capital Partners, whose sourcing and underwriting platform continues to generate accretive origination opportunities that advance our deployment strategy and ultimately drive shareholder value.”

C-III Capital Partners LLC is an investment management and commercial real estate services company of which Andrew Farkas is the CEO and Chairman. Since its foundation in 2010, Capital Partners has become a leading firm in its industry through a broad range of business acquisitions and other activities. C-III is an affiliate of Island Capital Group LLC, a leading international merchant bank.