Jeff Bartel is a major business and corporate leader, entrepreneur, and high-impact philanthropist in South Florida. He is chairman and managing director of Hamptons Group, a real estate investment, private capital, and advisory firm headquartered in Coral Gables. Jeff also is on the adjunct faculty at two universities, where he teaches life and business strategy courses. Jeff has been honored by business alliances, community organizations, universities, and governmental bodies for his leadership, philanthropy, social responsibility, and ethics including the Beacon Award Business Leader Award, the Gold Medal Award, Twelve Good Men in South Florida, Humanitarian of the Year, and the first-ever recipient of the Sunshine State Ethics in Leadership Award.

1. What inspired the launch of Hamptons Group?

It was while a senior C-suite executive at two Fortune 200 companies that I decided to broaden my professional and personal opportunities, to establish a personal business vision and real enterprise ownership and create a business platform where I could work with people, places, companies, and executives who do the right thing and do things right. I sought to establish a team and firm culture with the best and brightest colleagues and affiliates—to make wise, well-placed, and thoughtful investments of time, talent and treasure, to seek greater balance in my life and help those around me do the same, and to dedicate more time and resources to community service, philanthropy, part-time university teaching and writing, corporate board work, and family.

2. Who are some of your clients?

In our tenth year, we have been able to continue building Hamptons Group into a top-shelf private capital, real estate investment, and strategic advisory firm—with assets, holdings, affiliates, partners, and clients around the world. Our clients and commercial partners include three international conglomerates based in the U.S., Latin America and Europe, national and regional real estate investors and developers, publicly and privately-held companies in various industries and sectors, professional services firms, private lenders, local governments and agencies, electric utility and infrastructure companies, as well as several utility contractors and vendors.

3. Tell us about some of the deals the firm has been involved with recently.

Some recent projects, transactions and deals for Hamptons Group have included building a U.S. presence and business pipeline for an international conglomerate based in Latin America, the development of a large multi-family project on Florida’s west coast in Lee County, a massive utility and infrastructure conversion project on behalf of a local municipality, a travel and leisure company based in Europe, development of a golf course community in the Carolinas, a technology company based in Atlanta, public-private partnership real estate projects in New England, and a recent information technology company with clients across the country.

4. How has Covid-19 impacted your business?

COVID-19 has been an incredibly sad, strange, and sobering time for people, families, and communities across the globe. Due to the nature of our business at Hamptons Group, we have been fortunate to continue our firm’s investment and advisory services thesis without adverse effect. In actuality, because we can throttle up or back our deployment of capital, and be able to act proactively, react, and be agile to emerging conditions both macro and micro, we have been able to pursue several new projects during Q1 and Q2 2020. That said, due to social and workplace distancing rules, personal interaction has been limited to online and virtual interactions. That has been challenging when wishing to visit people, projects, and locations firsthand, but we have done some particularly good workarounds thus far.

5. What advice do you have for other companies right now?

Although the expression “fortune favors the bold” may hold true in some circumstances, now is not the time to make cavalier bets. The Fed has shown great proactivity with monetary policy, which has kept capital markets stable. However, it remains to be seen what kinds of fiscal policy decisions will help keep businesses (and their owners and employees) from further economic stress. From my perspective, this is the time for companies to focus on their core competencies, to remain agile in terms of financial and human capital deployment, and to be strategic in every decision looking through the lens of continued economic stress for companies in retail, office and commercial space, and hospitality and leisure.

About Hamptons Group, LLC 
Hamptons Group, LLC is a privately-held company with business segments in capital assets in venture capital, private equity, and private debt across various sectors and industries; real estate investment, finance, and ancillary services; and select strategic advisory and consulting services provided to private and public sector firms, companies, and local governments. Hamptons Group has holdings, affiliates, and clients across Florida, throughout the United States, and internationally. Our business segments include Hamptons Group Capital, Hamptons Group Real Estate, and Hamptons Group Advisors.