CPE’s 2018 Executive of the Year

FIRST PLACE:

Brian Kingston
Senior Managing Partner, Brookfield Property Group, and CEO, Brookfield Property Partner

Brian Kingston

Chief Strategist: Kingston has been with New York- and Toronto-based Brookfield for 17 years and has been CEO for three. Prior to his current roles, Kingston was CEO of Brookfield Office Properties Australia, CEO of Prime Infrastructure and CFO of Multiplex.

Brookfield by the Numbers: Brookfield Property Group has 285 investment professionals,17,000 operating employees and 30 offices in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, the U.K. and Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Brookfield Property Group has approximately $171 billion in total real estate assets under management and is the real estate arm of Brookfield Asset Management, an alternative asset manager with more than $330 billion in assets under management.

Mega Acquisitions: Brookfield completed the acquisition of GGP for $15 billion at the end of August while also introducing its new listed U.S. REIT: Brookfield Property REIT Inc. A second blockbuster deal closed in early December with a Brookield real estate fund acquiring Forest City Realty Trust for $6.8 billion.

Strategic Dispositions: Concurrent with the closing of the GGP transaction, Brookfield sold $4.2 billion of equity in retail centers to joint-venture partners. It plans to raise as much as $2.5 billion from this portfolio over the next 18 to 24 months to further offset the GGP deal. Other sales included two fully leased Canadian office assets for C$450 million (about $342 million): Queen’s Quay Terminal in Toronto and Jean Edmonds Towers in Ottawa. And it recently disposed of its North American and European industrial business, IDI Gazeley, generating a $1.3 billion return on an original investment of $400 million.

Multifamily Growth: Brookfield’s multifamily portfolio, which is New York-centric, has grown with the recent delivery of 844-unit The Eugene at Manhattan West and 359-unit One Blue Slip in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, both luxury rental towers. It also acquired interests in Waterside Plaza, a four-tower, 1,471-unit residential complex on Manhattan’s East Side, as well as a mixed-use development site in the Bronx where it will develop a seven-tower, 1,300-unit waterfront development. In London, Brookfield has 2,500 apartments under development, including 1,100 rental units.

Core Office: FFO in the third quarter rose 8 percent over last year to $136 million, driven primarily by leasing activity in downtown New York and Washington, D.C. Total occupancy climbed 20 basis points over the same period to 92.9 percent on 2.2 million square feet of leasing. Brookfield launched the third and final phase of the Bay Adelaide Centre in Toronto. Bay Adelaide North will be anchored by Scotiabank, which is taking 420,000 square feet, or half the building.

Retail Redux: With nearly 10 million square feet of leasing executed or committed through third quarter 2018, Brookfield reports that leasing by non-traditional tenants, like Life Time Fitness, has not abated, while internet-only businesses, such as Wayfair and Warby Parker, continue to open physical stores. Space previously occupied by department stores is still being repositioned for live, work and play uses: cinemas, restaurants, entertainment venues, residential and hotels. The legacy GGP portfolio ended the quarter 95.6 percent leased.

— Sibley Fleming

HONORABLE MENTION:

Debra Cafaro
Chairman & CEO, Ventas Inc.

Debra Cafaro

Top CEO: Cafaro is credited with raising Ventas Inc.’s market cap from $200 million in 1999 to $26 billion at its peak. She became chair of the Real Estate Roundtable for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2018. In October, she was one of three women named to the Harvard Business Review’s Top 100 Best Performing CEOs—her fifth consecutive year on the list. Prior to Ventas, she was president and a director of Ambassador Apartments Inc. Before real estate, she had a career in law.

Healthy Growth: Ventas Inc. is an S&P 500 company and REIT that owns more than 1,200 healthcare, life science and senior living properties in North America and the United Kingdom and is a leading capital provider for major care providers and research institutions. The company’s compound annual total shareholder return has exceeded 22 percent since Jan. 1, 2000. Accomplishments in 2018 included investing $400 million in university-based development and acquisitions with Wexford Science + Technology, extending leases with Brookdale Senior Living out to 2026, recapitalizing Atria Senior Living, establishing a senior housing relationship with newly formed Eclipse Senior Living, and acquiring a senior housing community in the Battery Park City area of downtown Manhattan. — Therese Fitzgerald

Daryl Carter
Chairman & CEO, Avanath Capital Management

Daryl Carter

Workforce Champion: Carter founded Avanath Capital Management LLC, a California-based multifamily investor, in 2008. Previously, he was an executive managing director with Centerline Capital Group., which purchased Capri Capital Finance in 2005. He co-founded and served as co-chairman of the Capri Capital family of companies. Prior to Capri, Carter was regional vice president at Westinghouse Credit Corp. and a second vice president at Continental Bank.

The Properties: Specializing in buying, adding value to and operating affordable and workforce housing, Avanath is an SEC-registered investment advisor and an institutional fund manager. The company has acquired $1.5 billion in properties (comprising 8,000 apartment units) in 12 U.S. states since 2009. In January of this year, the company announced the closing of both Avanath Affordable Housing III fund and the Avanath III NY Co-Investment fund. The funds represent $388 million in equity commitments from 19 investors, including three pension funds, three foundations, four U.S. companies, four U.S. banks, four U.S. family offices and one European family office. Acquisitions for the third round of funds include affordable communities in Chicago, Prince George County, Md., and Morris County, N.J.  — Therese Fitzgerald