Arie den Hartog is leaving Multi Corporation after a 25-year career at the Netherlands-based retail specialist during which he oversaw its European expansion, especially in Southern Europe.
Den Hartog initially held the role of commercial director of Multi Investment and later became managing director of Multi Asset Management and Multi Mall Management. More recently, he was responsible for the legacy portfolio following Multi's takeover by US private equity group Blackstone.
Den Hartog established his own company, Azul Real Estate Consultancy, earlier this month to focus on providing deal support and asset management services. 'After enjoying my work for Multi so much over the years, the time has come for the next step in my career, which offers me the opportunity to develop my skills outside Multi,' he said.
Heino Vink, chief operations officer at Multi Corporation, added: 'In his long career at Multi, Arie played an instrumental role in its international expansion and his experience and knowledge contributed to the further development of the asset and mall management portfolio. We owe him a great debt of gratitude for his sterling efforts and wish him every success in running his own company.'
Since it was founded in 1982, Multi has developed 190 retail schemes in Europe and Turkey, and it consistently held the the first or second places in PropertyEU's annual Top Developers rankings.
In October 2013 Blackstone took control of Multi after initially acquiring most of the developer's €900 mln in corporate debt. In the intervening years Multi has moved away from developing new shopping centres to becoming the asset management platform, with an element of redevelopment, for European and Turkish shopping centres owned by Blackstone's real estate funds.
Multi and currently owns and/or manages over 130 shopping centres across the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, the UK and Turkey.
Last month, PropertyEU revealed that Multi is selling its Dutch portfolio and a number of major shopping centres elsewhere in Europe. PropertyEU understands that 24 out of the total 130 centres in Multi's portfolio are on the market.
