Smeal Alumnus To Speak At College’s Advance Realty Lecture

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (April 3, 2008) – Smeal College of Business alumnus Simon Ziff '87, president of The Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group, will return to Penn State to speak at Smeal on April 8 as part of the college's Advance Realty Group Real Estate Lecture series.

The lecture begins at 11:15 p.m. in room 107 of Smeal's Business Building.

Headquartered in New York City, with offices in Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, Ackman-Ziff is one of the nation's leading real estate financing intermediaries, specializing in debt financing, mezzanine financing, preferred equity, joint venture equity, and sponsor equity.

Since joining the firm as Larry Ackman's analyst in 1989, Ziff has structured over $20 billion of debt and equity financings for some of the nation's foremost real estate developers and owners while solidifying the firm's relationships with key capital sources. He has engineered the firm's collaborative culture, which functions as a magnet for financial talent and has supported its evolution as an industry thought-leader with over 40 professionals on the team.

Ziff was named president of Ackman-Ziff in 1995.

In addition to his bachelor's degree in finance from Smeal, he holds a master's degree in real estate finance from New York University, where he was honored in 2002 with the university's distinguished Real Estate Alumni Recognition Award.

He has also been recognized on multiple occasions by the Real Estate Board of New York, including as the first recipient of its "Most Promising Commercial Salesperson of the Year Award" and six times as the recipient of its "Most Ingenious Deal of the Year" award.

The Advance Realty lectureship was established in 2004 to recognize the generosity of Peter '73 and Sharon Cocoziello and to provide a platform at Smeal for leading real estate professionals to discuss the issues facing the field.

Peter Cocoziello, a member of Smeal's Board of Visitors, formed Advance Realty Group in 1979 in Bedminster, N.J., six years after graduating from Smeal with a bachelor's degree in finance. He serves as president and chief executive officer of the company, which specializes in real estate development, construction, and property management, and is one of the leading real estate owners in the New Jersey and Washington markets.

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REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

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