Michael Byrne - AEW

Good Dirt: Conversations with Leaders in Real Estate & Beyond

Mike Byrne is AEW’s Chief Investment Officer and Head of Private Equity and Private Debt in North America. He has been with AEW since 2003, and today is responsible for overseeing all of AEW’s commingled funds, separate accounts and direct investments in North America. In this capacity he is responsible for the strategic direction and oversight of the Firm’s portfolio management, acquisitions, capital markets and asset management functions in addition to managerial responsibility of the Private Equity Group resources. Mr. Byrne also serves on AEW’s Investment Committee, Risk Management Committee and Governance Committee in North America, and he is a member of AEW’s Global Investment Committee. Prior to joining AEW, he was a member of the real estate team at the Pension Reserve Investment Management Board (“Mass PRIM”), where he managed the pension fund’s real estate and timber portfolios. Prior to that he worked at Citigroup in the real estate investment banking group. Mr. Byrne is a member of the Urban Land Institute (U.L.I.) and NAREIM, and a graduate of Dartmouth College.

Our conversation with Mike begins with his graduation from Dartmouth, where he captained the men’s hockey team, and entered the workforce at Salomon Smith Barney (Citigroup) as an investment banking analyst in the Real Estate & Lodging Group. With his first day in the real estate group falling on 9/11, Mike shares with us how this made for a strange start to a career. Amidst the ensuing capital markets turmoil, Mike then returned to his local roots and joined Mass PRIM as an analyst supporting the pension plan’s real estate and timber allocation strategies. We discuss how this gave Mike a unique perspective and foundation for the balance of his career, all of which has been spent in the real estate investment management business with AEW which he joined almost 20 years ago in 2003.

The bulk of our discussion centers around the tremendous growth and success of AEW over the years. Mike’s passion for AEW shines through as he shares with us observations on company culture, operating partner selection, the firm’s innovative menu of investment strategies, investing through cycles and AEW’s current outlook on the market from Mike’s perspective as CIO.

This was a terrific look into AEW, one of the world’s largest real estate investment managers with almost $100 billion of assets under management, 830 employees in 18 offices across the globe, and over 800 institutional clients. Mike Byrne is one of the market’s most prominent and respected investment management professionals, and this episode makes it clear why. We look forward to having Mike and his teammates back to Good Dirt as we know we’ve just scratched the surface.

For more information on AEW please visit https://www.aew.com/

*** As mentioned in the episode intro, the Bisnow Boston Healthcare Real Estate Summit will be held on Weds, May 24th. Jennifer Wong from AEW, Kyle O’Connor from MLL Capital and Brian Carlisle from Celera Properties will participate in a panel moderated by Good Dirt co-host Mike Greeley of Newmark’s Healthcare Capital Markets team and NE Medical-Academic Practice Group. For more info: https://www.bisnow.com/events/boston/healthcare/boston-healthcare-real-estate-summit-7823***

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Mike Greeley

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Tom Greeley

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasgreeley/