Hines promotes Adam Hines to co-CEO as Jeffrey Hines moves to chairman

Laura Hines-Pierce will have a new counterpart at the top of the family firm: effective Jan. 1, Adam Hines joins her in leading Hines's day-to-day operations and its strategic trajectory, while Jeffrey Hines, who has shared the co-CEO title with his daughter since she took it in February 2022, moves into the role of the firm's chairman. Commercial Observer first reported the appointments.

The reshuffle reaches a specific vehicle as well as the parent company. Hines-Pierce will replace her father as CEO and chair of the board of Hines Global Income Trust, and Adam Hines will join that trust's board as a director, putting both incoming co-CEOs on seats at the same entity as they take over the firm. The coverage attaches no date to those trust changes, and none to Jeffrey Hines's move to chairman; Jan. 1 is stated for the pair leading day-to-day operations.

Adam Hines's stated credential is the private wealth channel. Hines credits him with doubling the firm's private wealth business during his time as chief of staff of the office of the CEO and as a senior managing director; he joined in 2017 from Dexus, the Australian real assets manager where the coverage says he held several analyst positions. The multiple comes with no base attached, so the size of the business he is credited with doubling is not in the announcement.

Below the CEO line, David Steinbach has been promoted to become the firm's first president, and Alfonso Munk, promoted from co-head of investment management, will replace him as global chief investment officer. Steinbach's statement frames the president's job around scale that improves execution and around connecting knowledge held across markets, strategies and functions.

That reads as a coordination mandate rather than an investment one, which suggests the constraint Hines is managing at the top is how well capabilities already inside the firm travel between teams, not where the next deal comes from.

One detail sits awkwardly against the rest. Jeffrey Hines's statement says his daughter has already been leading Hines as co-CEO for five years, while the appointment Commercial Observer describes dates the co-CEO role to February 2022, and the coverage does not reconcile the two.

What the announcement leaves open is the number behind the promotion. A firm that elevates its next co-CEO on the strength of the private wealth channel is saying where it expects growth to come from; the size of that channel is the figure the announcement does not supply.