Real estate tycoon Yakir Gabay became a billionaire after successfully founding two of the largest property management companies publicly listed on the German stock exchange. To understand the former banker’s success in real estate, we researched his academic studies and former corporate management positions to understand the accomplishments.
Born in Israel, Yakir Gabay grew up in Jerusalem. He graduated with a BS degree in economics and accounting from the Hebrew University before moving on to complete an MBA degree in finance and business development.
Following the academic educational period of his life, Yakir Gabay took up a job within the SEC Prospectus Department in Israel. After excelling in this position, he moved into various capital market investment banker management jobs.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Gabay began making a name for himself after becoming the CEO of the investment banking division at Bank Leumi, one of Israel’s largest financial institutions. By the year 2000, Yakir became chairman and partner of the Gmul Investments Firm.
In the capacity of the latter position at Gmul is where Yakir Gabay became entrusted to manage securities, pension funds, and real estate assets valued at over €30 billion euros.
Suffice to say, Yakir Gabay’s strive for higher education in finance and key positioned employment opportunities in corporate banking appear to have been strategic stepping-stones, only partially explaining his success.
Using the banking, management skills and real estate experience, Mr. Gabay decided to trust his entrepreneurial instincts, and from scratch, set up a real-estate vessel to invest in properties across Berlin, London and Amsterdam.
In 2011, Yakir Gabay founded his first public company Grand City Properties, which stocks began trading at €2.7 per share, with a €150 million market cap. Less than 8 years later, the same shares have appreciated in value by over 800%, with a market cap to have exceeded €3.5 billion euros.
At present, Grand City Properties is the fourth largest public residential real estate company listed in Germany boasting over 2,500 apartments in London and 80,000 properties in Germany. In the post-Brexit era, analysts are expecting the UK real-estate property market to increase in value, which should yield huge profits for the company and its’ investors.
Yakir Gabay later founded yet another real estate giant, AroundTown SA to specialize in the acquisition and management of hotel and office properties. In 2015, Mr. Gabay listed the company on both the Euronext in Paris and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange starting with €3 per share, having a total market cap of €1.6 billion euros.
Aroundtown has grown meteorically over the past 5 years, recently crossing the €13 billion euro market cap.
Last month, AroundTown and Yakir Gabay made headlines after completing a huge merger with TLG-Immobilien, making the company Germany’s largest public listed real estate conglomerate with over €28 billion in assets, including a 40% strategic investment in Grand City Properties stock.
The initial benefits of the Aroundtown-TLG merger for the company and investors was revealed earlier this week. The Frankfurt Stock Exchange announced Aroundtown’s inclusion into the DAX-ESG index (which names the top 50 German blue-chip publicly traded companies).
According to insiders, additional benefits of the Aroundtown-TLG merger are expected, including potential synergies to improve the FFO of the combined entities by over €100 million. The newly declared strategic target of AroundTown is to further improve its global S&P rating from BBB+ to A.
In post-summary, our editorial research reveals the success of the former banker and now multi-billionaire tycoon was not created overnight, rather for over 3 decades, it was nourished and developed via education and corporate experience. During this time frame, Mr. Gabay appears to have developed a certain type of 6th sense virtue, allowing him to identify opportunity and appreciate asset value.
Using the “killer instinct” to create wealth in real-estate, we conclude the explanation behind Yakir Gabay’s success is ultimately consistency.
