Inside Rexford and Kilroy’s Executive Compensation

It’s proxy season.

First up: Rexford, which happened to be the focus of our last column. Because of the succession post-Elliott stake, we knew some compensation details via the former co-CEOs’ separation agreements and the new CEO’s employment agreement. Still, there are more details, so let’s dive in.

Former co-CEOs Michael Frankel and Howard Schwimmer’s total compensation last year was valued at about $26 million each. A lot of that was severance pay … the two received restricted stock valued at more than $22 million, which were “issued in lieu of cash severance in the event of termination without cause,” per the proxy. They earned $2 million cash bonuses, and their base salaries were unchanged at a million dollars.

Chief executive Laura Clark, pre-corner office, had a total compensation valued at about $9.5 million. That was mostly stock awards but included a one-time check for $200,000 for emergency temporary housing expenses after the Jan. 2025 wildfires, which displaced Clark. Her base salary was $700,000. She’ll take home more next year, but less than her predecessors — her base will be $850,000, and she’ll have lower cash incentives. Clark, on the industrial REIT’s last earnings call, mentioned Rexford was realigning executive compensation with shareholders’ expectations (no doubt a sign Paul Singer’s Elliott is cleaning house after becoming one of the largest shareholders).

Next is Kilroy. CEO Angela Aman’s total compensation last year was valued at $7 million — which consisted of about $800,000 base salary, more than $4 million in stock awards and a nearly $2 million performance-based cash bonus. It all adds up to less than her $11 million total compensation in 2024, which included a one-time equity boost to get Aman to take the gig, as The Real Deal previously reported. (Aman recently joined the Los Angeles real estate crew backing Matt Mahan, the NorCal mayor and California governor hopeful, with a $10,000 donation.)

Stay tuned for more on CEO pay in L.A.’s real estate landscape.

Bankroll

In case you missed it, more details surfaced on an all-cash offer that’s in wings on Oceanwide Plaza as its bankruptcy sale process grinds on. The foreign investment group is still unknown, but we know the entity and Sean Burton have an agreement for his Cityview to be a fee developer. Read more about the saga of downtown Los Angeles’ inescapable eyesore here.

Billionaires and their schools

James Cameron and 1666 Las Virgenes Canyon Road (StoneHarbor Capital, Getty)

James Cameron, who wrote and directed Avatar, sold a 22-acre campus in the Santa Monica mountains, a press release announced earlier this year. Records reveal the buyer is Shalom Institute, and the price tag was $7.5 million. StoneHarbor Capital’s Steve Wiseman brokered the deal. The Calabasas campus at 1666 Las Virgenes Canyon Road was a holistic private school of sorts founded by the famed filmmaker’s wife Suzy Amis Cameron. It’ll become the Shalom Institute Calabasas Campus, per the camp’s website.

Lease week

On Avenue of the Stars: Atar Capital inked a headquarters lease at 1950 Avenue of the Stars, one of the few new office developments in Los Angeles — JMB’s 37-story tower, which is said to be pretty pricey on rents, if not the priciest in all L.A.

The unfinished tower is commanding lease rates in excess of $10 per square foot per month, the Los Angeles Times previously reported.

Atar Capital plans to ditch its offices at 1999 Avenue of the Stars — and according to a person familiar with the matter, the 1950 half-floor lease is around 11,000 square feet. That would put the private investment firm’s lease at more than $1 million a year.

On Figueroa: On Location, a curated guest experience outfit, signed 108,000-square-foot lease at 445 South Figueroa Street. That is six floors at Washington Capital Management’s Union Bank Plaza. The Olympics were mentioned multiple times in the announcement, which appears will be the case whenever anyone is talking about downtown come 2028.

It’s unclear how much that tower commands but the average ask downtown is less than $4 per square foot per month (the Century City average is about $7.50), according to the latest Savills research. Again, rough math here using the typical rental rate, but On Location’s lease could run the company almost $5 million a year.

Let’s make the comparison fair, though. If the Atar Capital lease was 108,000 square feet, too, and we calculated the price using Century City’s typical rental rate, it would come out to almost $10 million a year. That tells you all you need to know about Century City versus downtown Los Angeles.