Strategic Capital co-founder joins Waterton

Waterton Associates has tapped Richard Hurd, one of the co-founders of Chicago-based real estate investment manager Strategic Capital Partners, as its first chief investment officer. Hurd, who will start at the firm next month, will report to Waterton’s executive committee, which comprises managing members and co-founders David Schwartz and Pete Vilim, as well as president and general counsel Marc Swerdlow. He also will serve on the firm’s investment and management committees.  

Hurd will be in charge of overseeing all of Waterton’s real estate transactions and will work closely with the firm’s acquisition and capital markets teams. Historically, the firm’s senior acquisitions team had reported to the executive committee. However, “while the executive committee will continue to be very much involved in the investment strategy, process and decision-making, we felt that hiring a CIO would help formalize the strategy-setting process and provide more structured support to the acquisitions team,” said Swerdlow via email.

Hurd currently serves as the president and chief investment officer of Strategic Capital Partners (SCP), a Chicago-based real estate investment manager that he co-founded with Darell Zink in 2005. At SCP, he primarily is responsible for managing the acquisition team, setting investment strategy, lender relationships and fundraising. The firm has invested more than $1 billion in value-added multifamily, hotels and commercial properties in the US, including on behalf of its $250 million fund, Strategic Partners Value Enhancement Fund.

Hurd’s relationship with two of Waterton’s principals dates back more than a decade. Schwartz, for example, has served as a member of SCP’s board of directors, while Swerdlow worked with Hurd in the late 1990s to early 2000s, when both were working at GE Capital. Hurd spent nearly 20 years at GE Capital Real Estate, where he most recently was a managing director responsible for overseeing the company’s institutional real estate equity investments.

The recruitment of Hurd is the latest new key hire that Waterton has made in the past year. In May, Michelle Wells, a former client relations professional at RREEF Real Estate (now Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management), came on board as the firm’s dedicated in-house investor relations person. Waterton also hired its first head of research, Philip Martin, formerly of Morningstar, in March, and a new chief financial officer, Doug Denyer, from Henderson Global Investors in January.