Hamid Moghadam

After business school, Moghadam[2][7] started his career at Homestake Mining Company. He later joined John McMahan Associates.[11] In 1983, he and Douglas Abbey founded Abbey, Moghadam & Company in San Francisco, California.[1][2][12] Although they planned to provide investment advisory services, according to Forbes, they soon became known for instead "helping investors revive underperforming assets."[2] They were joined by T. Robert Burke in 1984 and established AMB Institutional Realty Advisors, later named AMB Property Corp.,[1] with initial investments in office, industrial and community shopping centers.[13]

In the late 1980s, AMB changed its investment strategy to focus on industrial parks and shopping centers in infill trade areas,[2] with the company beginning to exit the office market in 1987.[13] During the collapse of the office building market in the late 1980s, this shift in assets helped the company avoid significant financial repercussions.[2] AMB launched its first private equity fund in 1989, which focused on industrial and retail properties.[12] AMB consolidated several of its investment funds in 1997[8] and went public as an REIT.[14] In late 1997,[12] AMB closed its IPO with more than US $2.8 billion in assets.[13]

Throughout 1999, Moghadam "made a series of moves that pared the company of most of its retail holdings, following the notion that e-commerce would become the high-margin road of the future."[1] Selling its retail business around 1999 to focus solely on the industrial sector,[12] starting that year AMB sold nearly $1 billion in retail assets to institutional investors and reallocated funds into warehouses in and around major consumption areas.[15][16] By the end of 1999, AMB was the second-largest industrially focused REIT in the United States, with a total market capitalization of $3.5 billion.[1] President and CEO of AMB Property Corporation,[17] he became AMB chairman in 2000.[3] AMB made its first overseas investment in 2002, developing a facility for Procter & Gamble in Mexico City.[12] In 2002, AMB initiated an international expansion program[13] focused on buying and developing distribution facilities near global trade hubs,[2] particularly in growth markets such as Latin America, Asia,[2] and Europe.[18][19][20][21][22] AMB added an internal development division in 2004.[12][3]

In 2011[12] Moghadam arranged the combination between AMB and ProLogis to create Prologis, the largest logistics real estate company in the world.[4][5] With a market cap of approximately $24 billion[4] and corporate headquarters remaining in California,[5] the new Prologis had around $46 billion in assets under management (AUM)[5] and clients such as DHL, Home Depot Inc., Unilever,[5] and FedEx.[12] ProLogis CEO Walter Rakowich and Moghadam were appointed as the new company's co-CEOs, with Moghadam becoming the sole CEO[5] at the start of 2013.[7][3] He oversaw IPOs in Japan in 2013[23] and Mexico in 2014.[24]

Prologis continues to operate as a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT)[25] on the S&P 100,[26][27] operating logistics and distribution facilities for customers in various industries[4][5][28] in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.[28] In 2018 he oversaw its acquisition of DCT Industrial Trust for $8.4 billion,[29] and in 2020, acquisitions of Liberty Property Trust for $13 billion and Industrial Property Trust for $4 billion,[30] then Duke Realty in 2022 for $23 billion.[31] The company's platform totals 1.2 billion square feet that is owned, managed or under development in 19 countries,[32] with about $196 billion in assets under management.[33] Moghadam frequently appears on major television networks to talk about the real estate industry, including CNBC,[34] Bloomberg TV, and Fox Business Network, as a real estate industry expert.[35]