Hines Promotes Laura Hines-Pierce to Co-CEO

US developer and fund manager Hines late last week announced the promotion of Laura Hines-Pierce to the role of co-CEO alongside current chairman and CEO Jeffrey Hines.

The change in leadership for Hines, which established its first Asia Pacific-specific pooled fund last year, comes as the Houston-based firm has also been ramping up its acquisitions and expanding its deals across Asia. Hines-Pierce has now been with the company founded by her late grandfather Gerald Hines since 2012, and will be sharing the CEO duties with her father.

“My father has been the catalyst for our global expansion and growth over the past three decades and I’m excited to partner with him at this pivotal moment for the firm,” Hines-Pierce said in a statement. “The pace of innovation in real estate is finally catching up with other industries; my primary focus has always been — and continues to be — positioning Hines at the forefront of those changes.”

This latest promotion comes after Hines-Pierce had served as a senior managing director in the office of the CEO since 2020, with the corporate scion credited with helping to build the company’s investment management platform that launched the Asia fund, as well as three US flagship funds, with those vehicles having a combined investment capacity of $4.8 billion in equity, Hines said.

Windy City Start

Hines-Pierce spent her first five years at Hines working in the Chicago office, where as a project manager she oversaw the development of River Point, a 52-storey office tower and 1.5 acre (0.6 hectare) park located in the city’s West Loop area and co-owned with Canadian fund manager Ivanhoe Cambridge.

The new co-CEO is a member of the executive committee and a non-voting member of the investment committee at the company established in 1957.

In 2017, Hines-Pierce worked in the office of the chief investment officer, focusing on several initiatives to refine investment strategy and acquisition efforts. From 2018 to 2020 she was the firm’s transformation officer, supporting strategic and transformative efforts across the business.

In addition, Hines-Pierce was a member of the team that set up the OneHines Women’s Network, leading to the creation of the firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiative.

Hines-Pierce earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and art history from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard University. Before joining her namesake firm, she worked in New York at art broker Sotheby’s in the Chinese contemporary art department and as a business administration manager. She also had a summer internship at investment bank Eastdil Secured.

Evolution Continues

Hines-Pierce has taken over her share of the chief executive role following a series of top-level Hines management moves in Asia, including the company’s appointment of former Angelo Gordon executive Jon Tanaka as its first country head for Japan last October.

Also in 2021, Hines hired former DWS executive Lim Kian Fong as its Singapore country head, with that change being announced in July.

The series of management upgrades tracks with Hines’s expansion of its Asia footprint, with the firm now managing $3.6 billion in assets in the region.

Just last week, Hines announced that it had acquired a warehouse in Nagoya as its first logistics asset in Japan, with that deal being revealed after the firm picked up a Yokohama office tower last November as its first asset in Japan.

In January, Hines released news of its first acquisition in Singapore, with the US firm teaming up with DWS Group — the fund management division of Deutsche Bank — to buy an industrial asset from a Blackstone-controlled trust for $69 million.

Before his death in 2020, Gerald Hines had transferred day-to-day operations to Jeffrey Hines, who became the firm’s CEO in 1990. Under the son’s leadership, the developer expanded into Europe and Asia and pivoted into global investment management.

Today the firm has a presence in 255 cities in 27 countries, with investment assets under management totalling $83.6 billion.

Hines has developed, redeveloped or acquired 1,486 properties spanning over 492 million square feet (45.7 million square metres). The company has more than 171 developments underway worldwide.