From the South Florida website: Howard Lorber, CEO of South Florida-based Vector Group and chairman of New York brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman, has been ranked South Florida’s highest paid CEO, with a yearly salary of $6 million plus bonuses, according to research carried out by the South Florida Business Journal.

Vector Group is famous in the tobacco industry for producing the Ligget brand of cigarettes, but is also involved in real estate through its New Valley subsidiary. New Valley has a 50 percent ownership interest in Douglas Elliman Realty, which operates the largest residential real estate brokerage company in the New York metropolitan area. New Valley also has real estate holdings in California, according to Vector’s website. [more]

From left: Donald Trump, University of Miami and Mike Leach

From the South Florida website: Donald Trump has weighed in on the University of Miami football coaching
vacancy, telling the university that it should hire his friend, former Texas Tech
coach Mike Leach to replace the departed Randy Shannon. The developer
wrote a note to Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami, in a newspaper article announcing Shannon’s firing. He also lobbied for
the school to hire Leach in 2006. [more]

New York City real estate bigwigs have become part of a group of 12 industry experts to establish a Center for Real Estate Studies and Research at the University of Miami.

The panel, which includes Howard Lorber, president and CEO of Prudential Douglas Elliman and Steven Witkoff, CEO of the Witkoff Group, will also help expand the university’s undergraduate and graduate real estate curriculums, as part of the school’s larger expansion plan for business education.

Lorber, who has sat on the school’s overall advisory board for approximately 10 years, said that the panel aims to build a comprehensive program that eschews “run-of-the-mill” curriculum. [more]