Brian King studied music in college but abandoned the idea upon graduating when he realized most of his musician friends were waiting tables. He wanted something more lucrative.
But it's a passion that's helped him build relationships in a career where he has ended up running a private real estate investment marketplace. King, now the CEO of Lodas Markets, says he still performs and was surprised to find that doing so has helped him in a career working in finance.
“Early in my career I actually didn't tell people that I sang or played instruments, but when I became more active performing on stages, it created a bit of a buzz in the business world around me,” King said in an interview. “People started asking me to sing at Christmas events, or karaoke events, etc., and it opened the door for a lot of businesspeople, especially [for] executives to get to know me that maybe wouldn't have noticed me otherwise.”
His chosen career path has included senior roles at Bats Global Markets, now part of Chicago Board Options Exchange owner CBOE after a $3.4 billion purchase in 2017. At Bats, he was part of the startup team that helped to expand it into what King described as one of the world's most active exchanges. At one point, he moved to London to start Bats Europe before moving back stateside to work for the New York Stock Exchange.
He left the NYSE after about five years, at the end of 2019. He officially launched what’s now known as Lodas in late 2021. Lodas stands for Liquidity On Demand As a Service and its headquarters is in Overland Park, Kansas.
“There’s a lot of illiquidity in the private market space … particularly when you look at real estate-related investments,” King said. “We wanted to create a platform, a marketplace, where real estate-related investments [and others] could be traded easily and efficiently in a secondary market.”
New Type of Marketplace
Part of the motivation was King seeing his parents lose their retirement savings in a real estate investment that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. King's parents, after they couldn't get their money out of a fund in 2006, had to sell their home in Burnsville, North Carolina, and move to the Kansas City, Missouri, area where the cost of living was cheaper, he said.
“That was their nest egg,” he said. “When you see your parents lose everything, because of not being able to find liquidity when they needed it, it definitely hit a chord for me. … I built enough of a career where I knew that now I can use my experience to create a marketplace that allows there to be liquidity for illiquid things.”
Since Lodas went live, some 45 products, mostly private REITs, have been traded on its platform. Blackstone’s BREIT and Starwood Capital’s SREIT both posted what's billed as their first trades in a secondary marketplace on Lodas this year. Blackstone REIT and other private real estate investment trusts began limiting investor withdrawals last year as investor concerns grew about the impact of increasing interest rates and inflation on the commercial property market.
Lodas, which has about $2 billion in buyside interest on its marketplace across all products, sees about half of that for buying shares in BREIT alone, King told CoStar News. Buyers on its platform include insurance companies, hedge funds and real estate funds, he said.
“Given the market condition, a lot of people started requesting redemptions” from BREIT and SREIT, King said. “When that outsized amount of redemptions happened, it became a big news element. … That's what opened up the door for us. … We already had a secondary market for nontraded real estate vehicles.”
King isn’t just schooled in trading and making a marketplace for buyers and sellers. He also has the benefit of a left and right brain blend from his interest in music and performing that he says has helped create connections he can use in business.
Music Scholarship
A tuba player and a singer, he was given a full scholarship to major in music at Florida State University in Tallahassee when he was just in ninth grade. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance in 1998, he initially had the desire to be a performer.
“But I did meet my wife in college, and we got married right out of college,” he said. “I had so many friends who went on to have a performing career, but they were all waiters and waitresses. I was like, ‘I don't know that I want to do that.’”
That was when he went to a job fair and found out no recruiter was hiring music majors except one with a pitch for him to become a financial adviser.
He eventually went on to start a financial advisory business in Jacksonville, Florida, and grew it into a company with $120 million in assets under management before he sold it. When his best friend was relocating to Kansas City after leaving the Jacksonville Jaguars to play for the Kansas City Chiefs, King followed suit and relocated, too. It was then that he received a phone call to join Bats when he was in his late 20s.
While his original desire to become a professional performer may not have panned out, King's musical talent has not been silenced. He has sung national anthems for sports events including a Kansas City Royals baseball game and performed in musical theater, including playing the role of Enjolras in "Les Misérables" at the White Theater in Overland Park, Kansas.
He also won a regional award for best actor in a play or musical for his part in a production of "Grand Hotel" in 2019. After he created and performed the harmonies for a "12 Days of Christmas" a capella medley to great response, he took what he described as a “big gamble” in exposing a part of his life that he said he used to keep private.