Eric Plesman Rejoins Oxford Properties as President & CEO

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James Bradshaw of the Globe and Mail reports real estate developer Oxford Properties rehires former exec as CEO:

Real estate investor and developer Oxford Properties Group has named Eric Plesman as its next chief executive officer, hiring back the company’s former head of North America from another Ontario pension plan.

Mr. Plesman will start on Nov. 3 as president and CEO of Oxford, which is owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund manager.

He is leaving his role as head of global real estate at the $123-billion Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan to return to Oxford, and takes over from executive chair Daniel Fournier.

Mr. Fournier, a real estate veteran, came out of retirement in 2023 to lead the company through a turbulent period for real estate markets.

Oxford has a $79-billion portfolio of global real estate assets totalling 142 million square feet. It owns notable Canadian properties such as Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre and the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta, and has developed prominent office and retail complexes abroad such as Hudson Yards in New York.

Before he joined HOOPP in 2021, Mr. Plesman spent a decade at Oxford, including as head of Canada and executive vice-president for North America.

“Eric’s impressive investment acumen and leadership skills make him the ideal person to build on Oxford’s 65-year legacy of investing in, developing and managing high-quality real estate,” OMERS CEO Blake Hutcheson said in a statement.

HOOPP has named Chris Holtved to succeed Mr. Plesman as head of global real estate, effective immediately, in another homecoming. Mr. Holtved left HOOPP in 2023 and worked for a brief period as a real estate consultant.

After Mr. Plesman takes over at Oxford in November, Mr. Fournier will continue to provide “strategic counsel” to the company into 2026. Mr. Fournier was seen as a steady hand at Oxford, with decades of experience, having previously led real estate investor Ivanhoe Cambridge.

Mr. Hutcheson called Mr. Fournier “one of the best and most selfless leaders I have ever worked with,” in his statement.

Like many large real estate investors, OMERS has wrestled with a challenging environment as high interest rates have put pressure on property values and raised the cost of borrowing.

The pension fund manager’s real estate arm eked out a 1.1-per-cent gain in the first half of 2025, after reporting a 4.9-per-cent loss last year.

Mr. Hutcheson has said that Oxford’s operating income and leasing rates have been solid in spite of the upheaval in markets, and that high-quality office buildings would eventually prove their value. (Lesser-quality office buildings saw their values drop sharply coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

“Even during the worst days of COVID, my view was, never count out that asset class,” Mr. Hutcheson said in an interview last month. 

Earlier today, Oxford announced a leadership transition with Eric Plesman to rejoin company as President & CEO:

Oxford Properties Group (“Oxford”), the global real estate investor, developer and manager owned by OMERS, today announced a planned leadership transition. Following a comprehensive succession process, Daniel Fournier will step away from the leadership of Oxford as of November 3, with Eric Plesman rejoining the company on that date as President & CEO.

Plesman is a highly accomplished and respected global real estate executive with deep familiarity with both Oxford and the Canadian pension fund landscape. He most recently served as Head of Global Real Estate at HOOPP where he led a diversified international business spanning North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Earlier in his career, Plesman spent over a decade at Morgan Stanley in progressively senior and global roles.

He first joined Oxford in 2011 and spent over a decade at the firm, driving significant success in his role as Head of Canadian Investments, before being promoted to Head of Canada then to Executive Vice President, North America to oversee Oxford’s largest geographic region by assets under management and personnel.

In addition to his leadership of HOOPP’s global real estate business, Eric serves as a member of the Board of Directors at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, which manages and operates Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, the largest airport in Canada. He also serves as Chair of the Institutional Investor Council at the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) which represents and advocates for global institutional investors.

“Leading Oxford over the past three years has been a profound privilege,” said Daniel Fournier, Executive Chair at Oxford. “From the outset, I committed to step aside when three conditions were met: that we accelerated progress against our biggest opportunities and challenges; we strengthened performance across the business; and that we secured the best possible leader for Oxford’s next chapter. With those goals achieved, now is the perfect time for Eric, who is an exceptional real estate executive, to take the helm and lead Oxford in its next chapter.”

“I’m honoured to return to Oxford, an organization whose people, culture and purpose I know firsthand and have a deep personal admiration for,” said Eric Plesman. “Oxford has a world-class platform that is unique in the marketplace, a clear strategy and strong momentum. I look forward to partnering with the teams across Oxford and OMERS to deliver for our customers, capital partners and members, and to build on the company’s global strength and reputation.”

“We are delighted to welcome Eric back to lead the Oxford Properties team,” said Blake Hutcheson, President and Chief Executive Officer of OMERS. “Eric's impressive investment acumen and leadership skills make him the ideal person to build on Oxford’s 65-year legacy of investing in, developing and managing high-quality real estate on behalf of the 650,000 members of the OMERS pension plan.”

Hutcheson continued, “Daniel Fournier’s extraordinary leadership has guided Oxford through an unprecedented time for real estate over the past three years. He is not only a remarkable investor but also one of the best and most selfless leaders I have ever worked with. He cares deeply about his team and achieving the best win/win outcomes. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Daniel for his exceptional work and his commitment to succession, and to ensuring a smooth leadership transition.”

To support a successful transition, Fournier will provide strategic counsel into 2026 and will work closely with Plesman to maintain focus and momentum against Oxford’s operational execution and strategic priorities. 

Let me begin by congratulating Eric Plesman on this incredible appointment, he's returning to one of the best real estate outfits in the world.

When I learned about it on LinkedIn earlier today, I was a bit surprised since Eric was doing a great job heading up HOOPP's real estate but Oxford Properties is a bigger outfit, one that he knows well.

Eric is as solid as you can get, we have spoken in the past, he definitely knows real estate investing extremely well, has worked with strategic partners to develop HOOPP's platforms and diversify their portfolio by sector and geography. 

He also worked at Oxford during the period when Blake Hutcheson was CEO there so he knows the organization well and he knows his new boss extremely well too (he'll be reporting to Blake who brought him on to fill this important role).

He's at a perfect age to take over the helm at Oxford and oversee its 1300 employees and he'll hit the ground running.

There are a lot of issues plaguing real estate in a post-pandemic world and some of them are being worked out but new challenges are arising, like higher rates and potential inflation shock.

Things are definitely tough out there, especially in Canada:

Last week I posted a great interview with QuadReal's Jay Kwan, another experienced and solid real estate investor, and he discussed many of the challenges and opportunities in the asset class.

Eric knows all these issues well and he will build on the work Dan Fournier has done over the last couple of years.

Fournier is a veteran, was never going to be there for long, and was initially hired to bolster the culture at Oxford and set up a long-term strategy. 

I never got to meet him but last time I spoke to Blake going over the mid-year results, he spoke highly of him (he always does).

Blake also shared his insights on real estate with me:

I think you've heard me say this consistently even during Covid, people need to live somewhere, people need to work somewhere.

Even in Covid, when everyone was saying the office is going the way of the dodo bird, we were building office buildings at Oxford. 

The truth is high quality AA, AAA office buildings will continue to do extremely well and didn't even break during Covid.

Secondary and tertiary assets, many of them are in deep trouble because there is a migration to quality.  

Looking at office, our portfolio is best of class in every market we are in around the world. In Toronto, we are 95% leased, across Canada, we are practically 95% leased. We just invested by buying out CPP Investments in seven big office buildings in Canada which put sour conviction where our wallet is.

We just announced a new building we are building in Hudson Yards, 70 Hudson Yards in New York, a large consulting firm is taking 800,000 square feet of 1.4 million, and that will be the first new office building in five years in Manhattan. I'm totally confident it's going to do extremely well.

So in our 62-year history at Oxford but even in the last 10 or 12, when people say thou shouldn't touch and something is going in the wrong direction, we look at the history, high quality great assets, if they're not playing into the fundamentals, we will. 

And I like our odds. We finished a building in Vancouver called The Stack, it's ahead of plan from a lease perspective. 70 Hudson Yards will be great. We are just finishing a new building in Sidney, it's going to take a while but it's going to do great. 

So, a great office is a great office, we like the trends, we never felt that with high quality assets we were in jeopardy and when everybody else said don't build more, we built more. 

I asked Blake if Logistics and Multi-family continue to be the sectors driving the returns at Oxford and he replied: 

Logistics interesting enough, uncertainty around supply chains, we are not seeing big appetite, a lot of people are sitting on their hands because why take up more space until they see how this game of chess plays out.   

For a while the direction of travel for rates for an industrial building was only one way, it was higher growth than any other sector, that slowed relative to other sectors but we have a great portfolio that's functioning well.  

And multi-family, because it's typically a 97% leased business, you have the ability to finance several. You won't really see an improvement until the cost of funds comes down. Because you have a high level of debt, that has a significant impact on yield and values. It will be better in the next 2-3 years as the Fed rate comes down. Right now, it's an ok sector but until the cost of money comes down, it's not going to be what we hoped.

Anyway, I am very happy for Eric Plesman, think he'll be a great leader at Oxford Properties and I'm rooting for him and the team over there because they run a first-class operation.

As far as Eric's replacement at HOOPP, I do not know Chris Holtved who will succeed him as head of global real estate, effective immediately, but the Globe article states he left HOOPP in 2023 and worked for a brief period as a real estate consultant.  

I'm sure Chris's photo and bio will soon appear on HOOPP's website here. 

Also worth noting, HOOPP's new CEO, Annesley Wallace, will be the featured guest at the Canadian Club Toronto on September 18th discussing "Renewing the Pension Promise for the Next Generation of Healthcare Workers". Details are available here. 

Below, CNBC's Diana Olick on the state of return to office and how it is impacting office vacancy rates.

Also, earlier today, Olick sat down with Travis King, founder and CEO of real estate investment platform Realm. King breaks down how family offices are shifting away from traditional stock and bond portfolios, his contrarian strategy for focusing on middle-market deals under $50 million, and why he's betting big on office buildings trading at fire-sale prices.

Lastly, join experts from CBRE and Mortenson as they discuss the growing importance of data centers in the real estate industry. Learn about the current state of the data center market, the challenges of finding suitable locations, and the evolving technology making data centers more energy and water efficient. Get insights on the future outlook and how to navigate the data center market.

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