About

‘Ed S. Nekritz performs far-reaching duties for Prologis, the largest global owner-operator and developer of high-quality logistics real estate with assets under management of $72bn. Most of its consolidated properties are in the US, while most of its properties outside the US are held in co-investment ventures. The company’s business model is more complex than other real estate investment trusts; Prologis has significant corporate legal requirements to facilitate its transaction pipeline and intricate tax obligations. Other business areas included in Nekritz’s remit include investment services, risk management, strategic capital, environmental services and compliance. Nekritz oversees these activities and embraces the complexity needed to support the multiple ways the company creates shareholder value. Since joining Prologis in 1995 as the company’s first in-house attorney, chief legal officer and general counsel, Nekritz has strategically grown an unparalleled in-house legal department of more than 20 attorneys who handle 90% of the company’s legal work. In 2016 alone, Nekritz and his team led more than $3.2bn of acquisitions and dispositions and handled 1,200 leasing related agreements covering 97 million square feet. Over the last six years, the legal team also executed more than $30bn of capital markets transactions, including the $16bn merger of AMB and ProLogis in 2011, multiple public offerings, tender offers and co-investment fund formations and redemptions. On average, the legal department oversees 55 to 65 transactions at any given time. Representative transactions include selling more than $10bn in nonstrategic assets in the first two-and-a-half years after the merger, the IPO of FIBRA Prologis on the Mexican Stock Exchange in 2014, raising nearly $541.4m and the IPO of Nippon Prologis REIT (NPR) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2013, raising $2bn. These also include the acquisition of KTR for $5.9bn and the subsequent integration of its 60 million square feet operating portfolio into the Prologis portfolio; and consolidating Prologis strategic capital funds from 21 in 2011 to nine in 2017. The efforts of Nekritz and his team have helped Prologis achieve an 87.2% total shareholder return since the close of the merger, a compound annual growth rate of 11.8% between June 2011 and July 2017. Nekritz and his team also seek to protect Prologis’ corporate reputation. Under his watch, the company has never been party to any legal actions for anti-competitive behaviour, anti-trust or monopoly practices, nor has it been involved in any controversies related to subcontractor activities or customer responsibility. Under Nekritz’s leadership, the Prologis legal team continues to stand out from its industry peers as innovators who play a crucial role in making and keeping Prologis the largest and best-run logistics real estate company in the world. Highly regarded as a general counsel, Nekritz has been named a “Top GC to Watch” by Corporate Board Member and the Top Chief Legal Counsel for Denver Business Journal’s C-Suite Awards for 2014 and 2015. He and his team were also ranked “”most standout”” among the Financial Times’ most innovative US law firms in 2013, and named a finalist for Best Proxy Statement at the Corporate Governance Awards in 2016’.