QuadReal Celebrates a Decade of Global Expansion
From a predominantly Canadian portfolio to a global business in just 10 years, QuadReal has combined local expertise with a vertically integrated operating model to diversify its investments and build for the long-term.
From its inception, QuadReal’s ambition was to build on its Canadian foundation to create a globally balanced portfolio. Remco Daal, Chief Operating Officer, says “it was always the vision to get us closer to 50-50” when asked about the mix of international and domestic investments.
The opportunity was to take what QuadReal knew from the Canadian landscape and build on it. Ten years into QuadReal’s history, that ambition has shaped both where the company invests and how it operates.
What began with a predominantly Canadian portfolio has grown into one of the world’s top 15 real estate investors, with investments in 24 countries and 2,500 employees worldwide. With offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London and Hong Kong, QuadReal combines experience built at home with the local knowledge and relationships that guide its global business.
The purpose behind that expansion was clear from the beginning: broaden the investment opportunity to support our high conviction strategy and bring QuadReal’s expertise to markets where it could create long-term value.
A wider world of opportunity
For Ramy Rayes, Executive Vice President, Investment Strategy & Risk at BCI and a QuadReal Board Member, expanding internationally addressed two priorities.
“While Canada is a very big country, it’s not a big investment universe,” he says. “Investing in real estate is about diversifying as well.” A concentrated portfolio, combined with strong competition for Canadian assets, made looking beyond the country’s borders an important step in pursuing returns.
QuadReal’s global ambitions were guided by the learnings and confidence in the approach it had established at home. “By taking the model of investment in Canada and exporting it to other parts of the world, taking that expertise and building on local knowledge, it opens up huge opportunities to create performance and critically diversification,” says Alastair Hughes, QuadReal Board Member.
That combination of an established operating model and local understanding would become central to the company’s international growth.
Global reach, local understanding
QuadReal’s approach is grounded in having teams on the ground, building relationships and understanding what works in each local market. That local presence shapes both investment decisions and the day-to-day operation of properties, helping ensure they meet the needs of the people who use them.
“We came into these markets the way most international capital does, carefully with a small team on the ground working with partners and learning how each local market works,” says Kristian Branum-Burns, Managing Director, Residential Europe.
Over time, that presence became more direct. “We’ve moved from investing with a partner to directly operating, building teams on the ground, taking on operations, and taking responsibility for the residents’ experience ourselves.”
In September 2025, QuadReal announced the full acquisition of Realstar’s UK and Ireland residential operating platform, along with the UNCLE brand in the UK and Europe. In June 2026, it announced the platform’s integration as QuadReal Residential Properties in the UK, bringing ownership, operations, asset management and resident experience together under one brand.
For residents, that means QuadReal’s role extends beyond the investment itself to the experience of living in its communities. For the business, it brings responsibility for investment decisions and everyday operations closer together.
Belinda Hill, Senior Vice President, Legal – Europe, has seen that evolution firsthand. She recalls a business that included passive fund investments before developing a directly owned and managed strategy across North America and the UK. “That’s a really exciting story to be a part of,” she says.
Building across markets and disciplines
QuadReal’s international expansion has also broadened the ways it puts its expertise to work.
In the US, QuadReal manages its industrial, residential and alternative asset class portfolios, and operates Article Student Living, a fully integrated student housing platform.
That expansion also extends to self storage in the UK. In March 2026, QuadReal announced the acquisition of a 27-asset UK self storage portfolio spanning 1.2 million square feet, alongside a new joint venture with Clear Sky capital.
The growth of the debt business reflects a similar approach: build experience in established markets, then apply it where new opportunities emerge.
“We’ve built a successful debt platform in North America, and we’re now taking that same approach to the UK and Ireland,” says Prashant Raj, President, Global Debt. “We’re backed by patient capital and an agile team, and we can move across the debt capital stack in both private and public markets.”
QuadReal’s global real estate debt platform has grown from $6B at launch in 2021 to $15.4 billion today, with $3.5 billion allocated to Europe and £275 million deployed across five UK loans since October 2025.
That portfolio is managed by investment teams in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, and London. The geographic reach is supported by people working in the markets themselves, connecting a global investment perspective with local experience.
Making integration count
For Jay Kwan, Co-President, International Equity, the distinction lies in how those capabilities fit together.
“What makes us unique isn’t that we’re vertically integrated in any given market,” he says. “It’s our scale and global reach combined with our full integration that sets us apart.”
Owning interests in operating companies across several markets is different from bringing those businesses fully into the organization. As Kwan explains, “that full integration in-house creates common alignment and common control.”
The significance goes beyond organizational structure. As QuadReal grows, integration helps connect the people making investment decisions with those responsible for managing assets and operating properties. It gives the organization a shared basis for putting its long-term approach into practice across markets.
Canadian roots, a global future
Through that growth, QuadReal’s Canadian identity has remained an important reference point.
“Our Canadian roots are incredibly important,” says Dennis Lopez, Chief Executive Officer. He points to integrity and values as part of the organization’s foundation, shaping both how it has developed and where it goes next.
R. Scott Hutcheson, QuadReal Board Chair, says building a global business means investing in people on the ground while carrying Canadian values into every market. “We have boots on the ground. We train our people, we put them in the field, and we grow out platforms so that we build global businesses with a value system that relates back to Canada.”
For Daniel Garant, Executive Vice President & Global Head, Capital Markets at BCI and a QuadReal Board Member, the next chapter builds on that foundation. “The first decade has been about building the platform. The next decade is about realizing its full potential.”
That is the opportunity ahead: bringing global reach, local understanding, and a shared operating approach together, while carrying forward the values on which QuadReal was built.
Explore how QuadReal has approached its global investing strategy.
About QuadReal Property Group
QuadReal Property Group is a global real estate investment, development and operating company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its assets under management are $98.5 billion. From its foundation in Canada as a full-service real estate operating company, QuadReal has expanded its capabilities globally for investments in equity and debt in both the public and private markets. QuadReal invests directly through operating platforms in which it holds an ownership interest and via programmatic partnerships.
QuadReal seeks to deliver strong investment returns while creating sustainable environments that bring value to the people and communities it serves. Now and for generations to come.
QuadReal: Excellence lives here.
Alright, US midterms are out of the way. Now comes chaos.
Just kidding, I think.
Anyway, I wanted to take a moment here and give credit to QuadReal, BCI's real estate subsidiary.
The story of this organization predates it, and its CEO/ CIO Gordon Fyfe.
Go back to Gordon's predecessor, Doug Pearce, the former CEO/ CIO at bcIMC, to understand how their portfolio used to be structured and why he made the NAIOP hall of fame:
Doug Pearce is the founding Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (bcIMC), one of Canada’s largest institutional money managers. Doug led the organization from 1988 until he retired in June 2014 and during this time, the Victoria-based agency became an internationally recognized investor with a global portfolio valued at CAD$ 118.0 billion diversified across dozens of countries and many asset types. bcIMC (now BCI) invests on behalf of most public bodies in B.C., including public sector pension plans that finance the retirement benefits of more than 550,000 British Columbians.
Real estate played an important role in diversifying bcIMC’s portfolio. Starting in the early 1990’s, bcIMC strategized and then built a global portfolio of high-quality office, industrial, retail, residential and mixed-use properties valued at CAD$ 19.8 billion in 2014. Also during that 20-year period, our firm developed 100+ Canadian properties. I am proud that bcIMC was a leader in environmentally-friendly buildings by upgrading older buildings to modern standards and aspiring to LEED Gold building expectations.
Doug has served as director and Chair of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG), the Pacific Pension Institute (PPI), and the Pension Investment Association of Canada (PIAC). He was a member of the Faculty Advisory Board at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business, the Advisory Board at the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), and currently sits on corporate boards that support his interest in business strategy and good governance. Currently Doug sits on the boards of: The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation Fund, FortisBC, and the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia.
Doug received his Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calgary, and is an accredited director in the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD). He lives in Kelowna BC and has a passion for skiing and biking.
At the time, however, it wasn't a global portfolio; it was almost exclusively a high-quality portfolio of Canadian real estate assets made up mostly of offices, multifamily and retail, with some mortgage activity (very similar to OTPP's Cadillac Fairview). And it was managed by external partners.
When I spoke to Doug Pearce back then, he said their real estate portfolio provided inflation-adjusted rents (yield) and was primarily Canadian because their liabilities were Canadian (same thinking as OTPP/ Cadillac Fairview).
When Gordon Fyfe took over as CEO/ CIO back in July 2014, his first order of business was to look at all the assets and see what could be managed internally and whether they had the requisite skill set.
Gordon wanted to diversify the real estate portfolio and manage more assets internally.
To do this, he first created QuadReal to house the assets and then hired Dennis Lopez to run this real estate subsidiary.
Then in 2019, BCI announced it will move over 40 Canadian real estate assets into a $7-billion fund in partnership with RBC Global Asset Management Inc. and Quadreal Property Group. At the time, the partnership was the largest CRE transaction in Canadian history (see my comment covering it here).
BCI, through QuadReal, kept a 50% stake in their Canadian portfolio to ensure alignment of interests, and used the proceeds to diversify its portfolio globally and by sector (more industrial platforms in particular).
The timing was fortuitous as the pandemic hit the following year and shook up real estate markets all over the world (had it not happened then, it probably would have never happened).
The rest is history.
QuadReal is now a global powerhouse, managing just shy of $100 billion in assets, dealing in every facet of commercial real estate transactions, including investment, development, and an operating company (very similar to Oxford Properties, OMERS' real estate subsidiary).
Last year, I covered a very interesting discussion with Jay Kwan, who's now Co-President, International Equity at QuadReal Property Group (see my comment here).
One person I haven't covered in-depth is Prashant Raj, President of Global Debt.
He's basically another superstar at QuadReal. He and his team have grown that platform from $6B at launch in 2021 to $15.4 billion today, with $3.5 billion allocated to Europe and £275 million deployed across five UK loans since October 2025.
That's very impressive.
There are many other top-notch professionals at QuadReal. You can view their leadership here.
I also invite you to read their news here, including a recent deal on Brisbane’s newest build-to-rent tower, Exhibition Place, which is officially complete, with residents now moving in. The 37-storey development has been delivered by Lendlease and QuadReal Property Group.
Below, over the past 10 years, QuadReal Property Group has expanded internationally to diversify its investments and pursue new opportunities, combining Canadian real estate expertise with teams who know their local markets. Hear from QuadReal leaders and Board members on the strategy behind that growth and how bringing investment, development and property management together connects business decisions with the everyday experience of residents and tenants.
Also, Built Together is a celebration of QuadReal's 10th anniversary milestone, tracing a decade of growth, purpose, and the people who made it possible. This video tells the story of QuadReal's first ten years: how a team built a vertically integrated global real estate investment, development, and operating company from the ground up, growing from $18 billion to nearly $100 billion in assets under management across North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Asia Pacific. Featuring voices from across the organization, this film captures the decisions, the discipline, and the culture that define QuadReal.
Lastly, an older (2019) clip from the RealLeaders Series, sponsored by Matrix360 Inc. Micheline Bentley interviews Dennis Lopez, CEO of QuadReal (featured at the top of this post). Listen to his comments and remember this interview took place at the start of 2019. QuadReal has grown nicely since then.
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