Colony Capital principal Kevin Traenkle, who'll be a panelist at Bisnow's SoCal Capital Markets Summit, Wednesday, Oct. 8 at the Casa del Mar in Santa Monica starting at 8am, says his firm's been deploying gobs of capital in Europe and just bought two $100M portfolios of office and industrial assets in the UK. (Also they spent about three pounds on a scone.)

The firm's also done deals recently in Spain, Ireland, and France, part of the $1.9B that Colony's invested in European markets over the past 24 months. Kevin says the firm's interested in Europe due to the amount of distress in the system there; banks are cleaning up their balance sheets, creating opportunities for good risk-adjusted returns. That said, there are still discounts to be had on complicated deals in this country—a month ago, the firm bought a $370M loan for 37 cents on the dollar. Kevin also tells us Colony has found a niche originating higher-yield loans on transitional properties, noting that banks are lending aggressively but only on the most stable assets. He and his 16-year-old son, Sampson, just took  a trip to Japan. Sampson actually picked the destination; he's studying Japanese and quickly "mastered the Tokyo subway system."