CBRE adds diverse leadership with three executive promotions

CBRE Global Investors, the $129.2 billion AUM real assets investment arm of commercial real estate brokerage CBRE, is planning a senior leadership transition that will appoint three women to executive roles.

In a statement to affiliate title PERE, Leitner said: “While diversity and inclusion have long been a focus for our firm, we have further elevated the priority as a strategic pillar of our company to move our business and our culture to the next level. We continue to deliver programs aimed at enhancing career progression, including fostering greater diversity in succession planning for senior positions.”

Kim Hourihan will be elevated to global chief investment officer at the Los Angeles-based real assets investment manager. She will assume her new role on January 1, 2022, taking the reins from Jeremy Plummer, who is retiring at the end of the year.

Hourihan’s promotion to one of the firm’s top posts comes just a year after she was named CIO of Americas direct real estate strategies. Currently, Hourihan – one of this year’s real estate Women of Influence – oversees an $18 billion direct investment platform and serves as portfolio manager for one of CBRE GI’s flagship funds, the $5 billion CBRE US Core Partners.

As global CIO, she will be in charge of all of CBRE GI’s real estate and infrastructure investment strategies in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. She will also chair the firm’s global investment committee and will continue to serve as co-chair of its global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council. A 25-year industry veteran, she joined CBRE GI in 2007.

“Kim is an inspiring colleague and investor who is very well placed to replicate her successes and drive our ability to deliver sustainable real assets investment performance across our full global platform,” said Chuck Leitner, chief executive of CBRE Global Investors.

Succeeding Hourihan as CIO of Americas direct real estate strategies is Julie Ingersoll, who will join CBRE GI in October. Ingersoll is a managing director at Canadian pension plan CPP Investments, where she is responsible for portfolio strategy design and execution for 50 million square feet of US residential and retail investments. She was previously CEO and chief operating officer of RREEF Property Trust, one of DWS Group’s non-traded real estate investment trusts. Ingersoll will join CBRE GI’s executive committee and the Americas investment committee, which she will chair beginning January 1.

Larissa Belova will replace Hourihan as portfolio manager for CBRE US Core Partners, effective immediately, having served as deputy portfolio manager for the fund since joining the firm in May 2019. As portfolio manager, she will be responsible for fund performance and involved in all other aspects of the fund, including asset management, driving income and expansion into other property types. She will also have a particular focus on ESG initiatives for the vehicle.

Justin Shanahan, who has worked on the 2013-vintage fund since its early years, will now serve as deputy portfolio manager. He will assume Belova’s duties for portfolio-level oversight of acquisitions, dispositions and asset management, as well as investor relations and capital raising.

The executive appointments are the latest in a wave of senior female hires and promotions in private real estate in the past year, as many of the industry’s largest managers and investors seek to diversify their senior ranks. All three executives will be based in New York.

In a statement to PERE, Leitner remarked: “While diversity and inclusion have long been a focus for our firm, we have further elevated the priority as a strategic pillar of our company to move our business and our culture to the next level.  We continue to deliver programs aimed at enhancing career progression, including fostering greater diversity in succession planning for senior positions.”

Plummer’s retirement at CBRE GI marks the end of a 33-year career in real estate. He joined the firm in 2006 following its acquisition of Oxford Property Consultants, which he co-founded in 2001. He continued to lead the indirect real estate business, which was renamed CBRE Global Investment Partners, before being appointed CEO of the CBRE GI’s EMEA business in 2016 and global CIO in 2018.

Previously, Plummer was European managing director at Security Capital Group, a US private equity real estate firm and was also head of real estate at SPP (now Alecta), Sweden’s largest pension and life assurance company.

As of June 30, CBRE GI managed $129.1 billion in assets across direct private real estate, indirect private real estate, private infrastructure, credit strategies, infrastructure securities, real estate securities and private equity, according to its website. Direct and indirect private real estate are the largest of the firm’s businesses, with a total of $109.3 billion.