Blackstone real estate chief Nadeem Meghji will step down at year-end
Blackstone global head of real estate Nadeem Meghji is leaving the world’s largest owner of commercial real estate at the end of this year, with the firm elevating two long-serving executives to succeed him as co-heads of the business, according to an internal memo from chief executive officer Steve Schwarzman and president Jon Gray seen by Bloomberg.
David Levine, who has led Blackstone’s Americas real estate business since the start of this year, and Giovanni Cutaia, president of Blackstone Real Estate, will take over Meghji’s global remit. Meghji plans to take time with his young family before pursuing new opportunities, the memo said. The Wall Street Journal first reported the leadership change, which Blackstone confirmed; a company representative declined to comment when contacted by Mingtiandi.
The exit is the second at the top of Blackstone’s real estate business in under a year. Meghji became sole global head only in January, after co-head Kathleen McCarthy left the firm in November following a 15-year run, and it adds to a broader churn of about a dozen senior managing directors who have departed the 45-strong real estate leadership group over the past three years, according to the Journal. It also lands as Schwarzman and Gray wrote in the memo that they now see real estate as “one of the most compelling investment environments we have seen in years,” following a stretch in which higher borrowing costs weighed on commercial property values.
“Despite this departure, we have a business with an enormous amount of continuity and tremendous talent,” Gray said, according to the Journal. “And David and Gio are prime examples of that.”
Path to the Top
Meghji joined Blackstone in 2008, working on transactions including the acquisitions of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village and Brixmor Property Group, and became head of the firm’s Real Estate Americas business in 2017, according to Blackstone’s own announcement of his 2024 promotion. He moved up to global co-head of real estate that January, succeeding Ken Caplan, who became one of Blackstone’s two global chief investment officers, and worked alongside co-head Kathleen McCarthy.
David Levine takes over as one of Blackstone’s two co-heads of global real estate (Image: Blackstone)
Meghji holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, a law degree from Harvard Law School and an MBA from Harvard Business School, according to his official Blackstone biography. He became sole global head of real estate in January this year, after McCarthy — who had co-led the roughly $320 billion business alongside him for two years — departed following a 15-year Blackstone career.
The Americas post Meghji vacated in January went to Levine, making this week’s elevation of Levine and Cutaia the second promotion inside Blackstone’s real estate leadership in less than a year.
New Co-Heads
Levine joined Blackstone in 2010 and previously served as co-head of the firm’s Americas acquisitions team, where he worked on more than $100 billion of real estate investments, including the acquisitions of Gramercy Property Trust and BioMed Realty Trust, and helped build a logistics platform now valued at roughly $75 billion, according to the memo and his Blackstone biography. Levine holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Northwestern University.
Cutaia joined Blackstone in 2014 from Lone Star Funds, where he had served as senior managing director and co-head of commercial real estate investments for the Americas, and spent more than 12 years before that at Goldman Sachs’ real estate principal investments group in New York and London, according to his Blackstone profile. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Cutaia was named president of Blackstone Real Estate in January, having previously served as the unit’s global chief operating officer and global head of asset management, a role in which he oversaw more than 12,000 assets across the firm’s portfolio, according to Blackstone’s past statements.
Turning the Corner
Blackstone’s real estate arm holds a global portfolio valued at more than $608 billion, according to the firm’s website, within a company that manages more than $1.3 trillion in total assets across private equity, credit and infrastructure. The business weathered its own rough stretch after late 2022, when investors rushed to pull money from Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, forcing the non-traded vehicle to cap withdrawals for more than a year.
Those pressures have since eased. BREIT began meeting all redemption requests in early 2024 and logged its first positive net inflow in four years in the second quarter of 2026, delivering an 11 percent net return to investors over the past 12 months, according to the Journal. Blackstone’s institutional real estate funds, known as BREP, are currently investing roughly $50 billion of capital and appreciated 19 percent over the same period.
Blackstone shares have gained 19.4 percent over the past year, edging out the S&P 500’s 18.4 percent advance over the same period, according to Yahoo Finance data as of 8 September. The stock remains well behind the broader market over longer stretches, though — up just 24.6 percent over five years against the index’s 70.4 percent gain — reflecting the toll of a multiyear, rate-driven downturn in commercial property values before the recent recovery.
