Kilroy Realty CEO steps down

John Kilroy Jr., who has been at the helm of office landlord Kilroy Realty since the early 1990s, will step down by the end of the year. 

Kilroy, who was the firm’s CEO during its incorporation in 1996, said he plans to pursue work on charitable causes. “I am enormously lucky to be vigorously healthy as I approach my 75th birthday and I want to take advantage of that to ensure that I can focus on other things that I wish to achieve in my life,” Kilroy wrote in a letter to shareholders. 

Kilroy Realty, previously known as Kilroy Industries, was founded by John’s father. According to a previous story from the Wall Street Journal, the elder Kilroy started his real estate business with $100 in savings. Today, the company’s portfolio includes 16.2 million square feet of office and life science space. It has operations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, the Pacific Northwest and Texas. The elder Kilroy died in 2016. 

The firm has been involved in a number of large transactions. In 2021, Kilroy sold a San Francisco office complex leased to tech firm Dropbox for more than $1 billion. The price was the second-highest for a single property in the city’s history. The firm also bought the Indeed Tower, a 36-story office property in Austin, for $580 million.  

John Kilroy Jr. took over the day-to-day management of the company in the 1980s. He started his tenure as the company’s CEO in 1991.  

In a press release, Kilroy Realty said that it has retained an executive search firm to find Kilroy’s replacement. It expects to name a new CEO by January of next year.