Hamid Moghadam, chairman and CEO of industrial REIT Prologis, Inc. (NYSE: PLD), has been named the overall winner of the 2013 National Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
EY said the award “recognizes leaders and visionaries who demonstrate innovation, financial success and personal commitment as they create build world-class businesses.” Moghadam also won top honors in EY’s Real Estate, Construction and Lodging category.
Bryan Pearce, who leads the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year and Venture Capital Advisory Group (VCAG) initiatives for EY in the Americas region, remarked that “entrepreneurship is embedded in this industrial logistics real estate firm’s DNA by design.” He noted that Moghadam has helped create a decentralized organizational structure that allows Prologis to combine a global reach with a strong local presence.
At an awards ceremony, Moghadam reflected that “this is indeed a great honor…(in) what other country in the world would a Persian kid out of business school in 1980, a couple of years after the Revolution and the hostage crisis, be given the opportunity to be up here in front of you?”
According to EY, Moghadam’s timing was “impeccable” in 2011 when AMB Property Corporation merged with its former competitor ProLogis. Moghadam co-founded AMB in 1983 and led the company through its initial public offering in 1997, as well as its merger with ProLogis.
EY lauded Moghadam for moving against conventional wisdom when, under his leadership, AMB began buying distribution facilities near global trade hubs, such as seaports, international airports and large metropolitan areas, while other real estate companies were building warehouses in low-cost areas. AMB also pursued an alternative strategy with rapid growth markets in Brazil, Mexico and China, EY pointed out, in order to aggressively develop facilities to store and deliver consumer products to the expanding middle classes in those countries.
The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award winners were selected by an independent panel of judges from more than 250 regional award recipients.
Moghadam is a former chair of NAREIT, and in 2005 received NAREIT's Industry Leadership Award.