NorthStar Realty Finance CEO David Hamamoto was the highest-paid chief executive in the real estate industry last year, raking in nearly $74 million from two real estate investment trusts he runs.
Hamamoto raked in more than $60 million for his role at NorthStar, which manages more than $19 billion worth of hotels, Crain’s reported. NorthStar Asset Management, a firm he spun off to shareholders last year, paid him about $14 million.
However, Hamamoto was not the highest paid real estate executive overall. Blackstone’s head of real estate, Jonathan Gray, made $206 million last year between salary, bonuses, and profit-sharing. However, he did not make the Crain’s Fortune 100 list of best paid CEOs, since he is not a chief executive.
Outsize compensation for real estate executives is increasingly common. Last year, three of the top ten highest-paid CEOs of publicly traded companies owed their fortunes to the real estate industry.
In August, NorthStar agreed to purchase Griffin-American Healthcare REIT for $4 billion. [Crain’s] — Tess Hofmann