HFF Founders, Top Execs Join CBRE

By Nicholas Ziegler, News Editor

On Friday, CBRE Group Inc. made four huge personnel pickups, with Harold Holliday, John Fenoglio, David Aaronson and James Richards joining the firm as executive vice presidents. All four will be based in the Houston office and will work on debt and equity-financing deals for clients in the region.

Brian Stoffers, president of CBRE’s debt and equity finance division, called the four “more than industry leaders” and said they were men who “define a culture of collaboration and excellence that lenders and borrowers have appreciated greatly. They join CBRE from Grandbridge Real Estate Capital.

Holliday has nearly 40 years of experience in mortgage brokerage and earned a national reputation as a co-founder of Holliday Fenoglio. Following HF’s acquisition by AMRESCO in 1994, he was charged with growing that firm’s commercial mortgage-banking business. After AMRESCO was sold to Lend Lease in 2000, Holliday joined Live Oak Capital with several former colleagues and partners. Grandbridge acquired Live Oak in 2008 and he served there as a senior vice president. He is a past member of the commercial board of governors of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Fenoglio, with nearly four decades in the mortgage banking industry, was also a co-founder of Holliday Fenoglio. Under his leadership HF became one of the largest commercial banking firms in the U.S. Following his retirement from that firm in 1998 he became a principal at Live Oak Capital. He has been a guest lecturer at Texas A&M University, Rice University and the University of Texas. He is a member of the Mortgage Bankers Association and the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Aaronson was a top producer at HF with responsibilities including debt originations, joint venture and equity placement, investment sales and investor relations. He was a co-founder of Live Oak Capital. Aaronson has a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and has served as a guest lecturer for Rice University.

Richards served 15 years as the managing director of the Houston office of HF. He has been an active originator of commercial real estate transactions in the mortgage banking sector for nearly three decades, and has an M.B.A. from the University of Houston and a B.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin.

HFF has gone through a number of name changes in its lifetime, with the company first conceived as Fowler, Goedecke & Co. in 1974. In January 1998, all related companies unified under the Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P. banner and, in January 2007, the firm went public on the NYSE as HF.