Hey! Thanks for being here for Edition #11. You're one of 240+ subscribers, and I genuinely appreciate every single one of you.
I stopped caring what people think a long time ago. People assume that means my standards dropped. It's the opposite.
I still walk away from people who create chaos, avoid accountability, blame everyone else, or can't keep their word. And I apply exactly the same filter to business partners that I apply to everyone else in my life - because character doesn't stay in one area. It leaks everywhere.
I'd rather have fewer people around me than lower the bar. That applies to who I do deals with, too.
Let's get into it.
A Shenzhen court sentenced Hui Ka Yan, founder of Evergrande, to life imprisonment and ordered full confiscation of his personal assets. The headline reads like a reckoning. For creditors, it isn't one.
There is roughly $45B in Hong Kong-governed offshore claims sitting against the group. Offshore liquidators have recovered $255M against that $45B+ owed. Assets confiscated in the mainland go to Chinese creditors first - foreign claimants sit behind them in the queue, and mainland confiscation takes priority over offshore process entirely. Historical recovery rates in comparable situations have run 3-4% or lower. A life sentence and a full asset seizure don't change the recovery math for anyone holding paper offshore.
The lesson generalises well beyond Chinese property. Collateral is only worth what a court can actually enforce against, and the court that matters is the one where the asset physically sits - not the one named in your documents. If you have exposure to Chinese developers or property deals, the questions are: where does the collateral actually sit, which court can enforce against it, and what happens when Beijing wants it?
Also this week:
One Raffles Place is close to changing hands for $2.4B. CapitaLand and IOI Properties Group Berhad are reportedly near a deal to acquire Singapore's most recognisable tower via a joint venture - two Grade A towers at 62 and 38 storeys, with an 841-year title on Tower 1 and a 99-year title on Tower 2. Seller OUE REIT controls 68%; occupant UOB holds 18.46%. The price is a reset from the $2.5B sellers were seeking back in February, and it ranks among the largest recent pure office deals in the Singapore CBD. CapitaLand is reportedly exploring partial redevelopment while letting UOB stay put - the classic private-markets playbook. The same pairing bought Asia Square Tower 2 eight months ago for S$2.48B, so two mega deals in eight months says IOI isn't just buying trophy assets, it's repositioning its entire Singapore platform. Unconfirmed as of writing, but Bloomberg has solid sourcing.
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
A VC backed by a $1B+ family office. He runs three businesses at once - venture investing, M&A advisory, and capital raising - which gives him a read on what companies actually trade for on both sides of the market. He scores every deal numerically against set criteria, starts with macro tailwinds and works bottom-up to specific bets, and kills a deal the moment he senses the founder is being dishonest about numbers. What stuck with me was the verticals: orbital data centres, longevity therapeutics, prediction markets, and vertical-specific robotics. Not the crowded plays - the second-order bets that still feel frontier. We also got into a $1.1B thesis on space-based compute and an unannounced US humanoid robotics investment. The full conversation is up on YouTube.
A family office in Singapore writing $20M+ tickets into pre-IPOs. They deploy their own family capital, but the real business is pulling together syndicates - and they've recently licensed a fund platform to scale it. Ticket sizes run $2-3M personal and $20-50M consortium, across AI robotics, crypto, fintech, and residential real estate, focused on Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. They don't sit back collecting IRRs - they're active at the founder level, which is how something like Lightnet Group has been with them since the Series A and is now past $100M raised. They brought two live, named opportunities to a first call, including a Chinese robotics IPO.
Two deals I underwrote this week:
A $23M, 150-unit garden-style apartment community in DFW. Stabilised rather than a turnaround, already 95% occupied and cash-flowing, picked up at a lender-forced discount of 40% below replacement cost from a seller who wants out quickly. The renovation program is mostly proven already and debt is quoted but not yet locked - fixed-rate, interest-only at 75% LTV, underwritten to 6% vacancy against 4.7% actual, with $800K+ in reserves carried through the hold. It sits under a mile from a major interstate in a fast-growing DFW metro where new supply is drying up. Five-year hold with no amortisation drag on equity, refinance considered before any eventual sale to an institution or family office. My verdict: strong fit for family offices and UHNW, medium fit for institutions, weak fit for private credit.
A $56M, 309-unit ground-up multifamily development in Northwest Houston, targeting stabilisation in 2028 under an experienced local developer. Site work is ahead of schedule and permitting came in $1M under budget before any units break ground - permits and construction docs are closed, hard costs locked via a fixed-price GC contract, market rent underwritten at $2.00/SF or roughly $1,810/unit. The location thesis is jobs: 20K+ arriving 2028-2030 with Chevron as the anchor, over 1M residents within five miles, no major competing supply pipeline, and Greater Houston rents up 42% over the last five years, in a top school district in the energy corridor. Downside sits behind an 8-10% preferred return and a sponsor holding 10% co-invest, with a refinance at stabilisation inside a tight but executable 24-month window as the base case. The whole thing assumes those jobs land on schedule - a delay tightens rent assumptions and pushes the hold past 24 months. My verdict: strong fit for private credit and family offices, weak fit for institutions.
I've spoken to 43 family offices this year. Not one of them was a warm intro.
I found every name on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn doesn't give you contact information, and that's where most people stop. Honestly, most of the work wasn't the pitch - it was figuring out how to actually reach each family office and get a reply. The pitch only matters once you're in front of someone.
I wrote down exactly what worked in a Notion doc, and I'm giving it away. It covers how I build the list in a single prompt, the six-email sequence I send, nine cold call openers, and 23 replies to the objections that come up over and over.
If you want it, reply to this email and I'll send it over.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Note: For the best reading experience, open this on a desktop.
Deal | Asset Type | Geography | Structure | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Miami Luxury Residential | Greenfield | USA | Equity | $40M |
New York Multifamily | Greenfield | USA | Debt/Equity | $25M |
Hong Kong Rezone | Rezone + Landbank | HK | Debt/Equity | $40M |
Australian Portfolio | Refinance | Australia | Debt | $350M |
This isn't the full pipeline - just a flavour of what's active. If you're an investor or lender active in any of these asset classes or geographies, reply to this email.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday.
— Jordon
P.S. I get 500,000+ monthly impressions on LinkedIn and a growing list of private capital readers right here. If you'd like to get your company, fund, or raise in front of this audience, just reply to this email.