Alpha Deal Maker

From his base in Hong Kong, Goodwin Gaw is building his Gaw Capital investment funds into a global real estate force.

- Ron Gluckman

Goodwin Gaw bounds into the boardroom, T-shirt over a muscular build, shiny black sport shoes on his feet. Looking more like a weekend clubber than a real estate rainmaker, this charismatic chief executive talks in rapid-fire fashion about billion-dollar valuations, disruptive technology and other buzzwords of the startup age.

Gaw, 49, embraces tech, yet he’s no IT mogul. Quite the contrary: He’s a Hong Kong investment guru who digs bricks and mortar. Starting in the U.S., then ramping up in China, he and his two siblings have built Gaw Capital into one of the world’s largest private equity firms in real estate, with $13 billion under management. The U.K. publication PERE (formerly Private Equity Real Estate) now ranks Gaw Capital as the 19th-biggest real estate private equity firm worldwide, up from 44th last year. Only one other Asian firm, Singapore’s Global Logistic Properties (No. 5), cracks the top 20.

Gaw’s speciality is derelict warehouses and forlorn hotels, hardly Silicon Valley stuff. However, he’s also invested his funds in much bigger deals, such as the $940 million purchase of the InterContinental Hotel (the former Regent) on Hong Kong’s Kowloon waterfront. It was the largest hotel transaction in the AsiaPacific region in 2015 and second biggest in the world. He will close soon on The Standard, High Line, in New York’s Meatpacking District. That hotel was supposedly sold in 2014 for $300 million, and it was largely unknown that the deal had stalled until Gaw swooped in and agreed to pay $340 million. Hotels are rarely the target of funds that aim to deliver alpha, but Gaw is generating excellent returns, say investors familiar with the firm, while also cultivating an interest in hotels and urban redevelopment.