Bill Ackman to Retire as Howard Hughes Corp Board Chairman

Famous hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, the founding chairman of the Howard Hughes Corporation, is retiring as chairman of the board. Ackman remains CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, which is a major shareholder of the Howard Hughes Corporation.

Scot Sellers, who has 40 years of experience as a real estate executive and has sat on the Howard Hughes board since its inception, will take over as chairman. Pershing Square partner Ben Hakim will join the board in Ackman’s place.

Ackman, 57, has 1.2 million followers on the social media platform X, where he and Elon Musk often riff off of each other, and where he led the charge in ousting Harvard University president Claudine Gay, the New York Times reported.

He has served as chairman of the board since Howard Hughes was spun off of General Growth Properties in 2010, when “it was a complicated collection of development assets, master planned communities, income-producing properties and other assets,” Ackman said in a news release.

The Woodlands-based Howard Hughes is spinning off its Seaport Entertainment division, which will make it a pure-play master-planned community firm. Its master-planned communities include the Woodlands and Bridgeland in the Houston area, as well as Summerlin in Las Vegas, Ward Village in Honolulu and downtown Columbia in Maryland.

Sellers previously served as chairman and CEO of Archstone, one of the world’s largest multifamily housing companies. He serves on the board of the Irvine Company and is chairman of the board of Maui Land & Pineapple Company.

Here’s what else is shaking in Texas real estate.

CBRE has hired Kelly Whaley as senior managing director of investor services for the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Whaley will lead investor leasing, capital markets and property management. The Dallas native joins the firm from Harwood International, where he worked for seven years as director of leasing and negotiated 1.5 million square feet of deals valued at $600 million, according to a news release.

SRS Real Estate Partners, a Dallas-based firm that specializes in retail and industrial real estate, has hired Rose Meza as a senior vice president, focused on landlord and tenant representation. She has more than a decade of experience, and has worked with landlords including Washington Prime, Lionstone Investments, the Stainback Group and Weber & Co. She previously worked at Segovia Partners and JLL.

Matthews Southwest Hospitality has hired Eric Friend as vice president of development and acquisitions. He will focus on development and acquisition of hotels and resorts, specifically expanding the CANVAS Hotel brand. Friend joins the firm from Bank OZK’s real estate specialties group, where he managed a $2 billion loan portfolio as vice president of asset management.

The Agency, a Beverly Hills, California-based firm that opened its first office in Dallas last year, now has a second Dallas-Fort Worth location, the Dallas Business Journal reported. The firm opened an office at 5566 Main Street in Frisco, where it has 12 agents. The brokerage, known for its reality TV presence, opened its first Texas office, in Austin, in 2022.