Capmark Financial Group, a leading US commercial real estate finance company, announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after sustaining heavy losses in the troubled real estate market.

The company lost 1.6 billion dollars in just the second quarter of this year.

"The filing should not impact the way Capmark does business with its customers and partners," the company said in a statement.

It assured that Capmark and its filing subsidiaries had in excess of 500 million dollars of cash and cash equivalents available to fund its operations.

"We view this reorganization process as an unfortunate but necessary response to recent unprecedented conditions in financial and commercial real estate markets, which presented a significant challenge for Capmark and similarly situated finance companies," said Jay Levine, president and chief executive officer of Capmark.

Mohsin Meghji, Capmark's chief restructuring officer, pointed out that the Chapter 11 process would give Capmark the opportunity to restructure its balance sheet while continuing to focus on maximizing value for its principal stakeholders.

He added that over the past months, Capmark had "extensive and constructive" negotiations with its primary creditors on a plan of restructuring.

"We expect to complete this effort over the coming months," Meghji said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved