Contact Us
News

EX-CBREI BOSS LOOKS OVERSEAS

San Francisco
EX-CBREI BOSS LOOKS OVERSEAS
EX-CBREI BOSS LOOKS OVERSEAS
Recently we snapped this of Bob Zerbst, who ran CBRE Investors for a dozen years. Bob was recovering from a separated shoulder (playing doubles squash, he ran into the wall covering his partner— ouch), but we still quizzed him about his new venture, Overseas Investor Services. “It’s basically a niche company that’s focused on EB-5 investors, in our case, primarily from China.” He tells us OIS’s initial investment strategy is targeting select or limited service hotels—development as opposed to purchase, because of the EB-5 job creation requirements (10 jobs per $500k of investment). Bob started with CBRE Investors as president in 1997, when it had $3B in assets, all domestic. By the time he stepped down as chairman at year-end ’08, it had nearly $44B, and half of that was outside the US. Today, CBRE Investors is the largest real estate investment manager in the world, due in part to the acquisition of ING’s real estate investment management business last fall.