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

Hines will hand its top executive job to the founder's grandson on Jan. 1, when Adam Hines, chief of staff in the CEO's office, becomes co-CEO alongside his sister Laura Hines-Pierce, with current co-CEO Jeffrey Hines rotating into the chairman role and stepping back from day-to-day management to advise the two, the firm said Friday.

Having held the co-CEO title since 2022, Hines-Pierce now completes the pair with her brother, and the transition reaches the firm's listed vehicle as well: she replaces Jeffrey Hines as CEO and board chair of Hines Global Income Trust, where Adam Hines will join the board. Hines also plans an external advisory board to give the co-CEOs outside counsel, though it will carry no governance authority and the firm says its investment committee authority is unchanged.

Two promotions round out the shift: David Steinbach becomes the firm's first president, and Alfonso Munk becomes global chief investment officer, giving up his role as co-head of the investment management business.

The succession has been in the works for years: Hines has said it was working through a plan that would see Hines-Pierce and her two brothers, Adam and Matthew, all join the CEO office, though only Adam's elevation was announced. He joined the company in 2017 and reached the executive suite in August 2024 as chief of staff in the CEO's office; Hines-Pierce previously served as senior managing director in that office and the firm's transformation officer.

Houston-based Hines manages roughly $91 billion with 4,600 employees across 29 countries, and it is among the few commercial developers still leaning into new construction, in California industrial and Sun Belt multifamily among other assets.

For allocators, the development book is the piece to watch, because Hines has been pivoting from buying to building on the premise that a global construction freeze left a scarcity advantage acquisitions can't match. Munk, the incoming CIO, told Bisnow in August that investors entering a stretch of the cycle that demands a return will find development generating "a very attractive return going forward," and moving the executive who has been making that case into the CIO seat suggests the build-over-buy wager survives the generational handoff rather than belonging to one leadership team.

Whether the wager holds is a separate test, because the 10-year Treasury sits at 5.3%, a yield at which, as PWD reported from Bisnow's commercial real estate finance event this month, deals that penciled a month earlier may no longer work. Development carries the longest lag between commitment and return, and Hines Global Income Trust now gives the incoming co-CEOs an immediate, listed proving ground.