Darren Steinberg’s worst day in his 12 years at the head of the Dexus Property Group was December 15, 2014 – the first day of Sydney’s tragic Lindt Café siege.“The risk team and the operations teams were coming to me as CEO and saying, ‘can we let the people go home?’” says Steinberg.
Many of the core group are still at Dexus, including Du Vernet, Deborah Coakley, now chief executive for funds management, Stewart Hutcheon, executive general manager for industrial, healthcare and alternates, Melanie Bourke, chief operating officer, and Jonathan Hedger, chief strategy officer.
“I would have loved to have sold a lot more office pre-COVID,” he says, while pointing out that the group has successfully sold assets in the last four years.Within listed property, the institutional investors, that you could “meet on the street”, have been replaced by the faceless index funds, which in Steinberg’s view makes M&A harder.
Steinberg says he has been “fortunate to work with great people”, including the Lowys and John Gandel.Advertisement“I spent the initial five years of my career in property management, which in hindsight may have been too long, but I learnt the nuts and bolts of the real estate industry. I learnt how to lease properly, I learnt how buildings operate from an FM perspective, from a leasing perspective, from a cash-flow perspective.