(Bloomberg)—Rick Singer, the former chief executive officer of Chinese insurer Ping An’s U.S. real estate venture, has joined Winter Properties as president.
Singer starts this month at Winter, a New York-based real estate investment, management and development company backed by the founders of closely held Standard Industries. “Rick’s background and leadership will give us the ability to accelerate the execution of our strategy,” Winter Properties Co-CEO David Winter said in a statement to Bloomberg.
Singer’s exit earlier this summer from the Ping An venture -- known as PARE U.S. -- follows a dip in activity by select Chinese conglomerates in the U.S. and elsewhere, in part due to controls on outbound investment by the Chinese government. In 2016, Singer said Ping An would invest “billions” over the next several years.
“The venture has been unwinding because of the more restrictive nature of the outflow of Chinese capital outside of China,” Singer said in an interview.
Ping An Real Estate is not currently investing in the U.S., and existing investments continue by joint-venture partners, he said. Those include Pier 4 in Boston’s Seaport District, which is being developed by Tishman Speyer, and a high-rise apartment apartment building in the South Loop of Chicago under development by Crescent Heights.
Winter Properties owns buildings including Manhattan’s 800 Fifth Ave., a luxury rental building overlooking Central Park, and previously had a stake in the Crown Building at 730 Fifth Ave., which was sold to GGP Inc. and New York landlord Jeffrey Sutton in 2014 for $1.75 billion.
Singer said he is looking forward to leading the path and new direction of Winter, which intends to grow in the U.S., especially in urban cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
“We’re interested in ventures and partners with emerging and well-established developers and owners in high-growth areas of the country where we can play an active role,” Singer said. “We’re agnostic to asset class.”
Before Ping An, Singer held roles including head of global real estate at Salomon Brothers.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Tan in New York at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at [email protected] Christine Maurus, Debarati Roy
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