Hamid R. Moghadam is an American business executive and philanthropist. In 2011 Moghadam orchestrated the "merger of equals" between AMB, a firm he co-founded in 1983, and ProLogis to create Prologis, the largest logistics real estate company in the world. Moghadam currently serves as Prologis Chairman and CEO, with Prologis operating as a multinational logistics real estate investment trust and S&P 500 company. Among other accolades, Moghadam is a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
After business school, Moghadam stayed in the United States and started his career at Homestake Mining Company. He later joined John McMahan & Associates. In 1983, he and Douglas Abbey founded Abbey, Moghadam & Company. They used a $50,000 line of credit to start the firm in a small office in San Francisco, California, with the partners initially taking no salary. Although they planned to provide investment advisory services, according to Forbes, they soon became known for instead "helping investors revive underperforming assets." They were joined by T. Robert Burke in 1984 and established AMB Institutional Realty Advisors, later named AMB Property Corp. AMB invested in office, industrial and community shopping centers on behalf of large institutional investors.
Going public with AMB
In the late 1980s, Moghadam changed AMB's investment strategy to focus on industrial parks and shopping centers in infill trade areas, with the company beginning to exit the office market in 1987. During the collapse of the office building market in the late 1980s, this shift in assets helped the company avoid significant financial repercussions. AMB launched its first private equity fund in 1989, which focused on industrial and retail properties. AMB consolidated several of its investment funds in 1997 and also went public as an REIT. In late 1997, AMB closed its IPO with more than US $2.8 billion under management. Joining AMB's board of directors, Moghadam became CEO of AMB Property Corporation in November 1997. 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." Selling its retail business around 1999 to focus solely on the industrial sector, starting that year AMB sold nearly $1 billion in retail assets to institutional investors and reallocated funds into warehouse spaces. 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. President and CEO of AMB Property Corporation, he became AMB chairman in 2000. AMB made its first overseas investment in 2002, developing a facility for Procter & Gamble in Mexico City. In 2002, AMB initiated an international expansion program focused on buying and developing distribution facilities near global trade hubs, particularly in growth markets such as Latin America and Asia. AMB added an internal development division in 2004.
Creation of Prologis
In 2011 Moghadam announced a "merger of equals" between AMB and ProLogis to create Prologis, the largest logistics real estate company in the world. With market value estimated at $24 billion and corporate headquarters remaining in California, the new Prologis had around $46 billion in assets under management and clients such as DHL, Home Depot Inc., Unilever, and FedEx. ProLogis CEO Walter Rakowich and Moghadam were appointed as the new company's co-chiefs, with Moghadam becoming the sole CEO at the start of 2013. He oversaw IPOs in Japan in 2013 and Mexico in 2014. In 2014, Prologis operated nearly 3,000 logistics and distribution facilities for 4,700 customers across a diverse range of industries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Prologis continues to operate as a publicly tradedreal estate investment trust on the S&P 500, operating around 3,717 logistics and distribution facilities for customers in various industries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The company's platform totals 772 million square feet that is owned, managed or under development in 19 countries, with around $97 billion in assets under management. In 2018 he oversaw its acquisition of DCT Industrial Trust for $8.4 billion. Moghadam frequently appears on major television networks to talk about the real estate industry, including CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Fox Business Network, as a real estate industry expert.
Moghadam was named EY's 1998 Real Estate Award Winner for the Northern California Region. In 2005, Moghadam was presented with an Industry Leadership Award from the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. He received a Lifetime of Building Award from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association in 2007, and also that year he received the Wisconsin Alumni Center's Vision Setter Award. Moghadam received the EY National Entrepreneur of the Year Overall Award in 2013, as well as the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Foundations, Inc.. In 2018, Moghadam was named by Harvard Business Review as one of the 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World for the third consecutive year, and a number of industry publications have named him their CEO of the Year.
Personal life
Moghadam and his wife Christina have a son together. Moghadam, a lifelong Republican, endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
