Hamid R Moghadam

Early life and education

Born in 1956 in Iran, Hamid Moghadam spent his childhood in the Iranian city of Tehran. He has two older sisters. His father ran a business initially involved in construction and development, which later expanded into related businesses such as banking and oil drilling. Moghadam recollects that "as a kid, I would ride around with him when he visited developments. The smell of dirt and concrete appealed to me." At the age of thirteen he began attending a British boarding school in the Swiss Alps, where he graduated at the age of sixteen. In 1973 Moghadam entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), when he was sixteen years of age. At MIT he received Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in engineering. In 1980 Moghadam received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California.

Founding Abbey, Moghadam & Company

After college, Moghadam planned to return to his native Iran to help develop his family's real estate portfolio. His plans were derailed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when the shah was overthrown and all of his family's assets were taken by the new government. Believing he was too secular to be successful in post-Revolution Iran, he instead looked for work in the United States. A frustrating job search led to Moghadam wanting to go independent.

In 1983, Moghadam and Douglas Abbey founded Abbey, Moghadam & Company. They used a $50,000 line of credit to found the investment manager 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 redirected 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. Beginning to branch out internationally, 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, forming a new private company. Later that year, Moghadam guided AMB, in conjunction with certain of its funds under management, through an initial public offering (IPO). 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. AMB acquired $838 million of real estate in 1998, also starting around $262 million worth of developments.

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. By 1999, Moghadam was both president and CEO of AMB Property Corporation, and he became AMB chairman in January 2000. AMB made its first overseas investment in 2002, developing a facility for Procter & Gamble. 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 Brazil, Mexico, and China. AMB added an internal development division in 2004. On December 1, 2006, he became AMB president.

Creation of Prologis

Moghadam was both chairman and CEO of AMB Property Corporation by 2011. At the time AMB was focusing on expanding its operations in China and Brazil, and that year the company announced it was considering a merger with ProLogis, another real estate investment trust. Moghadam orchestrated the “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. Prologis completed its IPO for its Mexican affiliate in June 2014, raising about $541 million. 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. The company’s platform totaled 574 million square feet that was owned, managed or under development.

As of 2017, Moghadam is Prologis chairman and chief executive officer, and is also on the Prologis board's three-person executive sub-committee. Prologis continues to operate as a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) on the S&P 500, operating around 3,322 logistics and distribution facilities for customers in various industries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The company’s platform totals 678 million square feet that is owned, managed or under development in 19 countries, with around than $67 billion in assets under management. 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.

Industry boards and committees

In the 1990s, he served on the MIT Center for Real Estate's advisory committee, and was also vice chairman of the National Realty Committee. Moghadam was previously a trustee of the Urban Land Institute, and served on the executive committee of its board of directors. He was also the chairman of National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) in 2004, and served as chairman of the Real Estate Investment Trust Political Action Committee. He was a director of Plum Creek Timber Company, and a founding member of The Real Estate Roundtable.

Philanthropy

Moghadam has served on various philanthropic and community boards in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has served on the boards of organizations including the California Academy of Sciences, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and the Town School for Boys, and he was chairman of the Young Presidents Organization’s Northern California chapter. He is on the board of the Making Waves Foundation. Previously a trustee of Stanford University, Moghadam is currently a board member of the Stanford Management Company, which manages Stanford University's endowment and other financial assets. He was formerly chairman. Moghadam and his wife also established the Moghadam Family Professorship in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Stanford Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies focuses on undergraduate courses related to Iran. In 2017, the Stanford Iran 2040 Project initiated the annual Moghadam Award in Iranian Economics.

Awards and recognition

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 (NAREIT). He received a Lifetime of Building Award from the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (NAIOP) 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. (NECO). In 2016, Moghadam was named by Harvard Business Review as one of the 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World, and three industry publications have named him their CEO of the Year.

Personal life

Moghadam's wife, Christina, graduated from the Stanford University in 1978. The couple have a son together, and live in San Francisco, California. Moghadam, a lifelong Republican, endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.