BlackRock has launched its global real estate securities capability – an investment platform born from BlackRock’s long-term experience in the real estate investment business and its proven expertise in Fundamental Equity investment.

Industry veteran Mark Howard-Johnson has been appointed as the Global Head of Real Estate Securities Management to lead the development of this business. One of Howard-Johnson’s first priorities will be to build a global team which is expected to include approximately six additional investment professionals by year-end.

The new global real estate securities team will work closely with BlackRock’s real estate research and investment professionals to identify and pursue investible trends in the real estate industry. The team will also look to leverage the broad investment market insights and trading expertise of the Fundamental Equity teams at BlackRock. The team will employ these resources as part of its intense fundamental approach to investing in real estate securities.

“BlackRock is already the largest manager in the REIT sector across a broad range of products – expanding this expertise for dedicated actively managed products is a natural extension of the firm’s robust real estate capabilities,” says Jack Chandler, Global Head of Real Estate at BlackRock. “This will further strengthen our ability to offer our institutional and retail clients an unrivaled set of real estate solutions. We are thrilled to have such an exceptional and experienced talent as Mark to drive the build-out of this addition to our platform.”

Howard-Johnson says: “I am delighted to join the BlackRock real estate team to develop its actively managed public real estate securities platform. BlackRock real estate investments span a wide range of strategies which now, with the addition of the active strategy, will be even more integrated and complementary of each other. I’m proud to be part of this superior team and look forward to strengthening the firm’s product offering for the benefit of our clients."

Howard-Johnson most recently served as Chief Investment Officer at Building & Land Technology, where he was responsible for launching its real estate securities management effort. Previously, Howard-Johnson was Global Head and Chief Investment Officer of REIT management at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. In addition to growing the business to over USD5 billion in assets under management, his team’s US flagship offering produced strong results for clients on both an absolute and relative basis. He also helped launch real estate securities products that pursued income, international, and long/short strategies. He holds a CFA and graduated from Dartmouth College.