David Helfand

Chief Executive Officer, Equity Commonwealth

Helfand steered the REIT that emerged from a 2014 shareholder revolt led by the late Sam Zell through its final years, liquidating the firm in 2025 after it failed to find a target for its massive warchest. Helfand, a longtime Zell protégé, was installed as CEO of Equity Commonwealth after activist investors ousted prior management, inheriting a sprawling office portfolio just as structural cracks were forming in the sector.

Helfand moved decisively. He relocated the firm’s headquarters back to Chicago and oversaw a sweeping selloff of office assets, unloading billions of dollars of property well before the pandemic reinforced his bearish view on long-term office demand. The strategy left Equity Commonwealth with an enormous cash position, a rare advantage as office values later cratered nationwide.

But the follow-through proved elusive. Despite years spent hunting for a large-scale acquisition to redeploy that capital, Helfand never pulled the trigger. As interest rates surged and dealmaking stalled, shareholders became insistent on liquidating the trust and returning the capital to investors. In 2024 and 2025, the REIT sold its remaining properties at steep losses — including office towers in Austin and Denver — before formally dissolving and transferring assets to a liquidation trust.

Before Equity Commonwealth, Helfand served as president and CEO of Equity LifeStyle Properties and held senior roles at Equity Office Properties Trust, where he helped execute the $39 billion sale to Blackstone in 2007, then the largest leveraged buyout in history.

He is also personally tied to another pillar of Chicago real estate: his father-in-law is Neil Bluhm, co-founder of JMB Realty and Walton Street Capital.

— Caleb McCullough