Oaktree Capital hires Colony Capital pro to head real estate team

John Brady, a 16-year veteran of Colony Capital, has joined Oaktree as head of the firm’s real estate group.

Oaktree Capital has hired John Brady, a former principal with Colony Capital, to lead the Los Angeles-based firm’s global real estate team.

Brady, who joined Colony in 1991, was active in the firm’s activities in North America and Asia. According to Bruce Karsh, the president of Oaktree, Brady led a number of transactions at Colony, including the acquisition of Fairmont Hotels and its merger with Raffles Hotels. Brady was also instrumental in launching the firm’s Asian platform in 1997.

“John was our first choice to lead our real estate team,” Karsh said in a statement.

At Oaktree, Brady will fill the shoes of Russell Bernard, the former head of the real estate team who left in 2005 to form Westport Capital Partners, a private equity real estate firm based in Stamford, Connecticut.

Oaktree currently manages more than $40 billion (€31 billion) in assets across 16 different investment strategies including high yield bonds, distressed debt, private equity, mezzanine and emerging market equities. According to the firm’s website, approximately $1.3 billion of its assets are in real estate.

In a statement, Brady noted that he wanted to “access the expertise of Oaktree’s other investment disciplines, such as distressed debt and private equity, in our real estate investing activities.”

He also noted that he wanted to use the firm’s platform to “take advantage of opportunities that will arise out of the dislocations and corrections affecting the real estate market.”