Investment bank finds things are looking up in SF market

Drawn to the Bay Area by an upswing in the office market, JPMorgan Chase & Co., the New York investment bank, decided a little over a year ago to open an office in San Francisco. Kate Emerson, 31, a vice president at the bank who heads the San Francisco group, helps the bank write loans that are then sold to Wall Street investors. Emerson was involved in last year's second-biggest real estate transaction in the Bay Area, the sale of about $1 billion worth of office space in Silicon Valley to Rreef, the San Francisco real estate division of Deutsche Bank AG. "There is a great energy here," Emerson said. "I feel very fortunate to arrive when I did." The Bay Area is benefiting from a resurgence in Silicon Valley, which has improved the office market there and also had a spillover affect in San Francisco, where accountants, lawyers and other professionals are taking more space because of demand from clients in the South Bay, Emerson said.

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