Cadre brings on former Four Seasons CEO as president

Allen Smith left the luxury hotel brand in 2018 after five years

Cadre founder Ryan Williams and Allen Smith
Cadre founder Ryan Williams and Allen Smith (Credit: Michael McWeeney)

Real estate investment startup Cadre has hired Allen Smith, the former CEO of Four Seasons, as its president.

Smith spent four years at the hotel company, departing in 2018. Before then, he was the CEO of Prudential Real Estate Investors, the Prudential Finance subsidiary that was recently rebranded as PGIM Real Estate.

In an interview with Forbes this month, he said he wanted to move more into the tech space, and described Cadre’s business model as “unique.”

“When I was at Four Seasons, we had a number of digital initiatives that exposed me to how tech was driving the marketplace and I wanted to do something that had a tech dimension,” he said.

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Ryan Williams, who founded Cadre in 2014 with Joshua and Jared Kushner, will remain CEO.

This month, The Real Deal reported that the company planned to scale back its Opportunity Zone investments. This month, the Treasury Department said it would investigate the federal program.

Cadre plans to invest in only one to three projects in 2020, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the firm invested more than $200 million across five Opportunity Zone projects last year.

[Forbes] — Sylvia Varnham O’Regan