Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust named a company veteran as its interim chief executive following the death of Wesley LePatner in the July 28 mass shooting at its New York headquarters building.
Robert Harper, 47, BREIT’s co-president and a director, will serve effective immediately, BREIT said in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. BREIT is private equity giant Blackstone’s real estate fund for wealthy investors. Launched in 2017, it primarily invests in stabilized, income-generating U.S. commercial real estate across key property types. A Blackstone spokesperson declined to comment beyond the filing.
LePatner, 43, was killed when a gunman armed with an assault rifle charged into 345 Park Ave. on July 28, also killing a young employee with landlord Rudin Management, a New York police officer and a security guard. The event has led building owners and companies to examine ways to enhance workplace security.
“LePatner was instrumental in building BREIT,” the fund said in the filing, adding that she served as BREIT’s operating chief and a director before becoming CEO this year. “LePatner’s brilliance, generosity, and impact on Blackstone and beyond will never be forgotten, and we will continue to honor her powerful legacy.”
Harper has been a BREIT director since August 2023 and co-president since March, BREIT said, adding that he’ll continue to serve in those roles. He was BREIT president from August 2023 through February, and BREIT’s head of asset management from August 2016 to August 2023.
Harper also is a senior managing director and head of Americas real estate asset management for Blackstone. He joined Blackstone in 2002 and worked for the company in Los Angeles and London, where he served as head of Europe for the Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies business. Before Blackstone, he worked for Morgan Stanley’s real estate private equity group in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
LePatner, who was with BREIT since its start, spearheaded the creation of Blackstone’s core-plus business that targets properties said to have slightly higher risk but offer potentially higher returns in the United States, Europe and Asia, Blackstone said last year when it appointed her BREIT CEO. LePatner was “integral to the success of these strategies” and helped “conceive, build and operationalize BREIT,” the company said.
BREIT has a net asset value of $53 billion, with 87% of the portfolio in data centers, industrial and rental housing, according to its website. The fund has generated an annualized return of 9.3% since its start, with a year-to-date return of 3.1%. BREIT, after posting negative returns in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes since 2022 that previously led to investors withdrawing their money, has been improving its performance.
Blackstone said last month that the new capital it took in from outside investors in the second quarter totaled $7.2 billion, up $1 billion from the $6.2 billion it received in the first quarter. That included $1.1 billion into the flagship BREIT.
For real estate, “the good news is it’s all about a question of when and not if” it will recover, Jon Gray, Blackstone’s president and operating chief, said on the company's second-quarter earnings call, adding that the U.S. central bank’s expected rate cuts will bode well for the commercial real estate industry, which has been pressured by high borrowing costs. “We are getting closer to that tipping point where real estate will start to move.”