Chief Executive Officer - Real Estate Development Firm

IRC Global Executive Search Partner:

Madison MacArthur, IRC Global Executive Search Partners - Canada

Search:

Chief Executive Officer

Client/Industry:

Real Estate Development Firm

Situation:

Our client was an entrepreneurial and rapidly growing real estate development company. The incumbent CEO was the founder of the company, and recognized that in order to effectively manage their growth and capitalize on potential opportunities he needed to bring in a senior real estate professional to run the day to day operations, establish more effective management and corporate governance practices and assist him in creating and executing on a long-term strategy for sustainable growth.

Assessment:

The organization was at a key point in its history, having grown to the point that it needed to transition successfully from the opportunistic and somewhat scattered approach of the founder, to one that was more in line with a company employing close to a thousand people and looking to attract institutional investors to fund its continued growth. The right person would be someone who had a strong track record of harnessing the energy and vision of an entrepreneurial founder to create a corporate structure that would lay the groundwork for a sustainable future. The successful candidate would not have necessarily been an entrepreneur, but they needed to be entrepreneurial, to a degree, and also possess the business maturity, leadership capabilities, and discipline to begin to transform the corporation from “founder” to “professional” management.

Challenge:

This search required us to find someone with a very unique set of skills and experiences. They had to be corporate, but also entrepreneurial; they had to have a strategic mindset, but also be strong operationally; they had to be capable of leading, but also have the kind of personality that could allow the founder, who remained with the company, to continue to be in the limelight. They also needed to be someone who was willing to trade off some short term compensation for the potential upside of equity and an eventual IPO. As well, this hire would send a clear signal to the industry and the capital markets about the company’s intentions, so they could not afford to make a wrong hire – candidate assessment would play just as vital a role as candidate recruitment.

Methodology/Solution:

We cast our net as broadly as possible within the North American marketplace, seeking to identify real estate development executives who had played a senior role in growing a company, but who were not the founding principals of these firms (who would likely be too entrepreneurial for the role in question and too expensive). Utilizing a variety of corporate databases, online business networking tools, and direct sourcing, we were able to quickly identify and evaluate a strong shortlist of people from both the U.S.A. and Canada. We advised the client on a range of additional assessment tools to complement the interview process. We also conducted extremely broad reference checks, speaking to not only those who had worked at the same company as the successful candidate, but also those who had partnered with him on deals, and provided his firm with legal and financial advice.

Candidate:

The successful candidate had spent the last eight years in a series of progressively more senior roles in a privately held real estate firm, reporting to the founder. In the last several years he had become the de facto CEO. Based in Canada, much of the firm’s work was in the U.S., and the real estate crash and credit freeze in that market meant that he and his current firm faced an uncertain future and limited prospects for substantial growth. He was motivated for a change, so long as it was at the C-level and offered an equity stake in a growth-oriented enterprise.

Postmortem:

The new CEO has only recently started in his role, but has impressed both internal and external stakeholders with his ability to hit the ground running. He has already put in place a process to provide a truer valuation of the company’s assets as well as facilitating discussions on a new approach to marketing the firm’s properties.

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