Two Execs Take New Posts, One Retires

[IMGCAP(1)]LOS ANGELES-Robert Zerbst has announced his retirement as chairman of CB Richard Ellis Investors, which has also named Shaun O’Connor as its new CFO, and Brookfield Properties has tapped Bert Dezzutti as a new SVP to oversee its Southern California operations. Zerbst, who plans to retire on Dec. 31, joined CB Richard Ellis Investors in 1997 as president and served as its CEO from 1998 until 2007, when he was named chairman.

During his tenure, Zerbst led CBRE Investors through strategic changes that brought rapid growth and globalization of its investment management business. In a little more than 10 years, CBRE Investors grew from a domestic pension fund adviser with $3.7 billion of assets under management into a global investment organization with approximately $44 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2008.

Following his retirement, Zerbst will remain active in the real estate industry, serving as a special adviser to CB Richard Ellis Investors CEO Vance Maddocks. Zerbst also is the incoming chairman of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers,the principal trade organization representing the real estate investment management industry.

O’Connor, who stepped into his new role at the beginning of October, has more than 20 years of financial operations experience and joins CBRE Investors from GE Real Estate. At GE, he served in various financial planning and analysis roles before being named CFO of Europe in 2006 and then CFO of the US Equity business in 2008. Before GE, O’Connor held finance positions at AIG and IBM.

[IMGCAP(2)]Dezzutti,who most recently was the chief operating officer at Los Angeles-based Bentley Forbes. At Brookfield he has responsibility for setting the strategic direction and overseeing the day-to-day operations and activities of the company’s Southern California portfolio, with an emphasis on the company’s 4.6 million sf of assets in Downtown Los Angeles.

Dezzutti, who has more than 22 years of experience in various executive-level positions in commercial real estate, was responsible for overall operations at Bentley Forbes. Before Bentley Forbes, he was a senior vice president at Equity Office Properties from 2001 to 2006, where he oversaw 17 million sf of assets in Southern California.