Windstream's CS&L appoints Wallace to be CFO, treasurer

Windstream's Communications Sales & Leasing (CS&L) has put another executive of its management team in place, naming financial veteran Mark Wallace to be the company's senior VP, CFO and treasurer.

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Wallace

Wallace, who will officially take his post on April 1, comes to CS&L from private equity, real estate and asset management firm Fortress Investment Group, where he served as the company's managing director.

He comes to the position with plenty of experience in dealing with the real estate investment trust (REIT) structure that CS&L is based upon.

During his tenure at Fortress, Wallace served as CFO and treasurer of New Senior Investment Group Inc., a publicly traded senior housing REIT that completed a spinoff in late 2014. He also served as executive vice president, CFO and treasurer of HCP Inc., an S&P 500 healthcare REIT.

Before going to Fortress, Wallace served as senior vice president, CFO and treasurer of Westwood Holdings Group, which provides investment management services to institutional investors, private wealth clients and financial intermediaries. In addition, he spent 11 years at Arthur Andersen guiding private and publicly traded companies. 

Earlier this month, Windstream's board of directors gave final approval to spin off select telecom assets into CS&L. Under the terms of the agreement it has with Windstream, it will lease assets to the telco through a long-term triple-net exclusive lease. Windstream will operate and maintain the assets to deliver services to consumers and businesses, while CS&L will focus on expanding and diversifying its assets and tenants through future acquisitions.

Ever since Windstream announced its decision to spin off its assets into a publicly-traded REIT, financial and telecom analysts have pressed other telcos such as AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink, Frontier and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) to see if they'd consider a similar structure.

While AT&T and Verizon have been selling off some of their wireline assets to other providers like Frontier, those two telcos said they have no plans to conduct a similar deal for their assets.   

For more:
- see the release

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