Even as reports surfaced that it would purchase a group of suburban offices near Chicago, GE Real Estate installed a new president and CEO: Ronald Pressman, who has led GE”™s real estate operations before and who most recently was CEO of GE Asset Management.
GE Real Estate, a subsidiary of GE Commercial Finance, moved its headquarters June 25 from Stamford to Norwalk. Parent General Electric Co. is based in Fairfield.
Pressman replaces Michael Pralle, who left to pursue other interests according to GE, which did not provide additional details. Pralle had led GE Real Estate since 2000; last year the unit produced a $1.8 billion profit on $5 billion in revenue.
A 1980 graduate of Hamilton College, Pressman has led a number of other divisions at Fairfield-based General Electric Co., including Employers Reinsurance and GE operations in Central and Eastern Europe.
GE named NBC Universal president Jay Ireland to replace Pressman as CEO of GE Asset Management.
The managerial shuffle comes as GE Real Estate bid for offices in suburban Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune. The portfolio has been owned since January by Blackstone Group after its acquisition of Equity Office Properties.
Just a week earlier, GE Real Estate reached an agreement to acquire from Blackstone more than 100 office buildings in California, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Salt Lake City totaling nearly 6 million square feet of space. GE Real Estate is also in the process of buying an office portfolio in Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland from Dundee REIT for $2.2 billion.
