The Global PERE Awards are always a highlight of the year. Charting and celebrating the successes of the best in our industry is a pleasure and a privilege.

Voting for the 2020 awards closed in January 2021. The verdicts are in, separating the best from the rest both globally and regionally – across Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Americas – in 69 award categories.

That is a greater number of awards than we have ever run before. The expanded list both reflects and celebrates excellence in private real estate.

The winners themselves need no introduction. Blackstone is the most successful firm in the history of the awards and has had a banner year, even by its own high standards, claiming a further 17 awards, including the highly coveted Global Firm of the Year award.

Hong Kong-based manager Gaw Capital Partners, another perennial powerhouse, added three more awards to its collection, claiming the titles of Asia’s Alternatives Investor of the Year, Office Investor of the Year and Capital Raise of the Year for the $3 billion it corralled for its Gateway Real Estate Fund VI and a related sidecar vehicle. Singaporean logistics specialist GLP also notched three wins, including Firm of the Year: Central & Eastern Europe.

Some of the most attention-grabbing wins came in the country-level and sub-regional categories. Surprisingly, several firms claimed these awards outside their home markets. South Carolina-based Greystar was named Firm of the Year in Australia. US alternatives specialist Harrison Street claimed the honor for the UK, and fellow Chicago-based firm LaSalle won the category in France and Japan.

Houston-based Hines also took a country-level award – Firm of the Year: Italy – as part of its decorated showing. Along with being named Global Office Investor of the Year as an organization, the firm’s chairman and chief executive, Jeff Hines, took the title of Global Industry Figure of the Year and was honored with the PERE Lifetime Achievement Award. A 30-year industry veteran, Hines has successfully steered his company through one of the most tumultuous periods the office sector has ever seen.

All our winners have emerged after a long and rigorous process that began in November when the editorial team began canvassing the views of colleagues and contacts to find out which capital providers, managers and advisors in the private real estate market most deserved recognition. The nominees were as impressive as ever.

Senior team members from PERE and parent company PEI Media then consulted trusted industry leaders to construct an impartial shortlist. The shortlist for each award category consisted of four firms, with companies also invited to submit nomination proposals to be considered – although these proposals were neither a requirement nor a guarantee that a firm would end up making the cut.

With all of that done, control was handed to you, the readers. Your votes have decided the victors.

The competition this year was fiercer than ever before. Congratulations to all the firms – both the winners and the nominees – in the Global PERE Awards, each of which is an example of the best their field has to offer.

Finally, thank you to all the thousands of readers who voted. You can read all about the achievements of this year’s winners, including an interview with the winner of our Lifetime Achievement Award, over the following pages.