Billionaire Steve Cohen Boosts Real Estate Bets at Family Office

(Bloomberg) -- Steve Cohen’s family office hired Todd Kristol to build a real estate team, the latest area of expansion for the billionaire’s private investment efforts.

Kristol, who previously worked for the family office of late billionaire Don Marron, will be a partner and head of real estate, initially focusing on office, industrial, multifamily and retail properties, Cohen Private Ventures said Wednesday in a statement. Kristol’s team will target transactions where the family office is the control investor.

“Real estate is a natural extension of our existing portfolio and investment strategies, and Todd has the deep experience and expertise to help us capitalize on the potential in the space,” Chief Investment Officer Andrew Cohen said in the statement.

Investors are flooding parts of the real estate market after it was pummeled by the economic impact of the pandemic. Investors spent $53 billion on multifamily real estate in the three months ended in June, the most ever for the second quarter, according to Real Capital Analytics.

Cohen, 65, the founder of hedge fund Point72 Asset Management and majority owner of the New York Mets, is worth $11.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He’s made personal investments in privately traded companies and assets for many years. In March 2014, he set up Cohen Private Ventures to house the investments, ranging from private equity and venture capital to structured securities, specialized credit investments, according to Point72’s website.

Cohen’s most high profile investment is the Mets, which he bought in September 2020 in a deal that valued the New York-based baseball team at $2.4 billion. Cohen, who had already been a Mets investor, had earlier been in talks to acquire the team in 2019, and had to beat out a rival bid from Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez.

About two-thirds of Cohen’s fortune comes from his stake in Point72 assets. He also has an art collection valued at around $1.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg index.

The extremely wealthy are increasingly setting up, or expanding, family offices as the number of billionaires and their fortunes have surged in the past two decades. 

 

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