One of the most active industrial buyers in California is shaking up its roster of top executives by promoting its chief financial officer to a newly created operations role, and filling the CFO post by hiring a retail real estate veteran.
Rexford Industrial Realty said Laura Clark will step into the newly created role of COO on Nov. 18 now that the REIT has hired Michael Fitzmaurice to take over her current job as CFO.
Rexford said it was promoting Clark, who has been CFO of the company for four years, to the new COO role in June. Her responsibilities will include asset management, investments, development and construction, leasing, property management and marketing, the company said.
Rexford, with a portfolio of 424 properties containing 50.3 million rentable square feet of industrial space, has been one of the most-aggressive buyers of industrial real estate in Southern California during the past two years. In March, the firm snapped up a 3 million-square-foot portfolio spanning Los Angeles and Orange County from global investment giant Blackstone in a $1 billion deal, CoStar News reported.
Both Clark and Fitzmaurice hail from retail REITs.
Before joining Rexford, Clark worked as senior vice president of capital markets at shopping center REIT Regency Centers for eight years. Prior to that, she worked in institutional sales at Green Street Advisors and was vice president of capital markets at Iron Tree Capital. She also served as vice president at Inland Capital Markets Group, where she was involved in more than $1.5 billion in acquisitions.
Fitzmaurice brings 25 years of past REIT experience to the company. He most recently spent six years as executive vice president and CFO of shopping center REIT RPT Realty, where he helped manage the company’s sale to Kimco Realty in January 2024.
Prior to joining RPT, he worked at Retail Properties of America before it was acquired by Kite Realty in 2021, He also worked at General Growth Properties before Brookfield Property Partners bought it in 2018, and at Equity Office Properties, now EQ Office.
Year to date, the company has purchased $1.4 billion of properties containing 4.3 million square feet in Southern California.
Last quarter, Rexford paid $61 million for two properties spanning 271,205 square feet in Los Angeles. It said it plans to redevelop one of those properties, Herbalife Plaza in Torrance, California, from an office property into a Class A industrial site.
Rexford said it has another $200 million of infill Southern California industrial properties under contract. The firm ended the third quarter with $61.8 million in cash and $995 million available under its unsecured revolving credit facility.