CGI Merchant Group: a firm profile and full timeline, from the advisory years to the 2026 unwind

Most write-ups of this firm start in 2020, which is where the press releases start. The record here starts earlier, because an earlier business is documented: an advisory practice organised into capital markets, project finance advisory, corporate finance advisory and a real estate investment group, each described separately in the way advisory firms of that period set out an offering. That description is the only public account of what the firm did before it owned buildings, and it is set out here in the same shape, one section per discipline rather than collapsed into a single paragraph.

The second era is the one that generated the coverage. In December 2020 the firm announced a hospitality fund co-sponsored with A-Rod Corp, with Maverick Capital Partners named as joint venture partner, at a headline size of $650 million. Deployment followed quickly: a hotel portfolio in Miami and Miami Beach, a co-working platform, Coral Gables office and retail, a campus hotel commitment in Atlanta, and in 2022 the transaction the firm is still best known for, the Old Post Office leasehold in Washington.

The third era is documented just as thoroughly and receives the same treatment. From 2024 the direction of every recorded event reverses. Debt was sold, assets were surrendered, and by 2026 the firm had sold the Coconut Grove building it worked from. The timeline below sets out the sequence; each entry links to the file that carries the detail and the sources.

A timeline is the honest format for this material because the individual announcements were never the story. Read separately, a fund launch, a landmark purchase and a celebrity partnership are three unrelated pieces of good news. Read in sequence against what followed, they are one structure being assembled and then taken apart, and the interval between the two is under four years.

The acquisitive sequence runs: fund announced December 2020; a $30 million commitment to a hotel on the campus of Morris Brown College in March 2021; the Nexus co-working portfolio expanded into Boynton Beach and Boca Raton; a $23.4 million CMBS loan placed on Coral Gables retail; the former Celino on South Beach acquired and reopened under Hilton’s Curio Collection in September 2021; and in May 2022 the Old Post Office leasehold, followed within weeks by a $250 million investment partnership announcement.

The exit sequence runs: the Gabriel Miami mortgage sold to Madison Realty Capital in 2024 at a reported $60 million; the South Beach hotel handed to its lender rather than contested through a reported $69 million foreclosure; the Washington leasehold passing to the lender group associated with BDT & MSD; 550 Biltmore Way in Coral Gables lost in early 2026 and reported by The Real Deal; 55 Miracle Mile in special servicing; and the Coconut Grove headquarters passing to Torose Equities against a $32.5 million mortgage bought from Madison Realty Capital while the position was in UCC foreclosure.

Presented that way the pattern is legible. Almost nothing left the portfolio through a conventional sale at a chosen moment. Control moved through the debt in nearly every case, which is a different thing and has different consequences for the equity, for the lenders, and for what the public record can establish about value.