David Brush
Chief Investment Officer, Merlin Properties
Mr. Brush has over 38 years’ experience as a real estate professional. He started his career as an analyst at Philadelphia National Bank in 1983 and moved to Bankers Trust (now part of Deutsche Bank) as a Vice President in 1987. During his 20-year tenure at Bankers Trust/Deutsche Bank Real Estate, Mr. Brush founded the Real Estate Opportunistic investing division, where he was Global Head and CIO of the business for 13 years.
During that time, he built the team from a group of 10, based solely in New York, to a global team of over 60 professionals with offices in London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul. During his tenure as global head of this team, he supervised the completion of over 200 transactions consisting of real estate acquisitions, equity investments, corporate recapitalizations and distressed loan portfolio acquisitions with an enterprise value in excess of $75.0 billion.
From 2008 to 2012, Mr. Brush served as Chairman and Senior Advisor to the Deutsche Bank real estate division where he led the portfolio restructuring effort in the wake of the global financial crisis. From 2012 to 2014, he served as Managing Partner at Brookfield Property Group with responsibility for leading the firm’s real estate investing activities in Europe. During his tenure at Brookfield, among other investments, Mr Brush led the acquisition of Gazeley Ltd from Economic Zones World and the acquisition of EUR 1 billion in distressed debt in Colonial S.A. with the intent to take control of the company through a conversion of the debt to equity.
Most recently, Mr. Brush co-founded Merlin Properties with two other partners in 2014. At the time, the IPO of Merlin was the largest real estate IPO ever completed in Europe, raising in excess of EUR 1.3 billion. During the ensuing 7 years, At Merlin, he supervised the investment strategy of the company with the result that Merlin is now the largest REIT in Spain and among the top ten in Europe with assets of EUR 13.0 billion. Mr Brush retired from Merlin in 2021 and now serves as a senior advisor to the company.
Mr. Brush holds a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a Trustee of the University from 2007 to 2017.