Dive Brief:
- Camden Property Trust announced that its co-founder Keith Oden is retiring in an executive capacity on Aug. 31, which marks the final step in the REIT’s multiyear succession process, according to an Aug. 3 press release.
- Oden, who will remain a member of the board of trust managers, started with Executive Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder Ric Campo in 1981. “He’s the ‘den’ in Camden — that’s how much of himself he has put into our Company,” Campo said in the release.
- Campo, who said he couldn’t have asked for a better partner and friend to build Camden with, said that Oden’s drive for “living excellence and determination” is a large part of why the REIT has spent 19 consecutive years on Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list, according to the release.
Dive Insight:
In March, Camden, the last of the six major apartment REITs to have its original leadership in place from its initial public offering in the 1990s, activated its long-anticipated succession plan.
Alexander Jessett was promoted to CEO and joined the board of trust managers, while Laurie Baker became the Houston-based REIT’s president and chief operating officer. Benjamin Fraker was promoted to executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer.
While other apartment REIT founders and executives who shepherded their firms through IPOs have long retired, Campo and Oden continued to lead Camden decades after the firm went public.
Jessett joined Camden in 1999 — six years after the company went public.
“I have had the profound pleasure of working alongside and being mentored by Keith for over 27 years,” Jessett said in the release, “and I look forward to continuing to work closely with Keith in his capacity as a valued member of our Board. His lasting legacy will forever be our unwavering commitment to improving the lives of our team members, customers, and stakeholders, one experience at a time.”
The March announcement was “momentous as CPT was among the few long-public REITs still run by its founders,” Alexander Goldfarb, managing director and senior research analyst for investment bank and financial services company Piper Sandler, wrote in a recent research report shared with Multifamily Dive.
“Ric and Keith’s enduring legacy is, along with Sunbelt-peer MAA, elevating the status of the South to rival the valuations ascribed to the Coasts,” Goldfarb wrote. “No longer second fiddle as the Sunbelt has proven its allure with CPT’s FFO multiple doubling since IPO.”
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