Barry Sternlicht
Barry Sternlicht is the founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Starwood Capital Group, the private investment firm focused on global real estate, energy, infrastructure and securities trading. He is also Chairman of Starwood Property Trust, now the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the United States traded on the NYSE.[1]
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[edit] Career
Sternlicht launched Starwood Capital Group in 1991 with $52 million. His goal was to buy up multi-family apartment buildings that were being auctioned off in the government’s bailout of the savings and loan crisis.[2] In 1993, Sternlicht sold the portfolio to real estate magnate Sam Zell for more than 20 percent of Zell’s Equity Residential Properties Trust. When Zell took the company public that year, Starwood saw a 100 percent return. Sternlicht later began to purchase hotel sites, focusing on combining his passions of architecture and real estate finance.
Starwood Capital Group today ranks as one of the largest and most successful investment firms focused on real estate. For the past twenty years, it has structured investment transactions with an asset value exceeding $40 billion.[3] Starwood's funds have invested in more than 40,000 apartment units, more than 1000 hotels, over 22 million square feet of office properties, 15 million square feet of retail and over 20,000 acres of land in residential subdivisions. Today the firm manages approximately $12 billion of investor capital on behalf of its high net worth and institutional partners.
From 1995 through early 2005, Sternlicht was Chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., a company he founded in 1995. Sternlicht has been credited as a dynamic and innovative hotel leader, creating new products and programs with immediate global appeal. He has been named the King of Hotels,[4] creating W Hotels, perhaps the world’s most successful “boutique” brand. Some of his other innovations include the creation of Westin’s “Heavenly Bed,” “Heavenly Bath,” “Westin Workout,” and Starwood Preferred Guest, the world’s first frequent traveler program with “no blackouts.” [5]
[edit] Awards
In 2010, Sternlicht was named Executive of the Year and Investor of the Year by Commercial Property Executive.[6] Global peer-voting polls sponsored by Private Equity Real Estate magazine named Sternlicht as the Global Industry Figure of the Year and as North American Industry Figure of the Year in 2010, his second consecutive year in this category.[7] In 2004, he was named America’s Best Lodging CEO by Institutional Investor magazine.[8] Sternlicht was inducted into the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame.[9]
[edit] Personal
Sternlicht is a trustee of his alma mater, Brown University. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Estée Lauder Companies, Baccarat Inc., National Golf, Mammoth Mountain, Ellen Tracy, Field & Stream, the International Advisory Board of Eurohypo Bank and Advisory Board of Zelnick Media. He serves as Vice Chairman of Robin Hood and is on the boards of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), the Dreamland Community Theatre, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s National Leadership Advocacy Program, and the Business Committee for the Arts.
Sternlicht was born in New York City in 1960 and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982. He got his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1986.[10]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.starwoodcapital.com/Team.aspx?menuid=10
- ^ http://www.starwoodcapital.com/Overview.aspx
- ^ http://www.starwoodcapital.com/Overview.aspx
- ^ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1997/12/08/234901/index.htm
- ^ http://www.starwoodcapital.com/Team.aspx?menuid=10
- ^ http://www.cpexecutive.com/business-management/managementstrategies/sternlicht-named-cpe-executive-of-the-year-3/
- ^ http://www.perenews.com/Article.aspx?article=59798&hashID=372F748D6DD59A5155572DD865D0F96B92A80414
- ^ http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/1026682/Search/The-best-CEOs-in-America.html?Keywords=barry+sternlicht
- ^ http://www.interiordesign.net/hof/11271-Barry_Sternlicht.php
- ^ http://www.starwoodcapital.com/Team.aspx?menuid=10
