One of the largest Gulf State sovereign wealth funds named its first dedicated head for U.S. real estate.
The United Arab Emirates' Mubadala Investment Co. hired Daniel Fletcher as head of Americas for real estate. Fletcher joins Mubadala, which had roughly $326B in assets under management at the end of 2024, from Toronto-based private real estate firm Dream.
:no_upscale():quality(75))
Fletcher’s jump to the Abu Dhabi-based fund is reflected on his LinkedIn profile and was first reported by PERE News. A source familiar with the hire confirmed to PERE that Fletcher had been hired and would report directly to Richard Nodell, the fund’s global head of real estate.
Mubadala didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday morning.
Roughly 17% of the fund’s diversified portfolio is allocated to real estate, or around $32B, the firm said in its 2024 report released in May. The sovereign wealth fund doesn’t disclose the breakdown of its commercial real estate holdings by region, but 42% of its total capital is deployed in the U.S., by far the fund's highest concentration.
Its investments include a 90% stake in New York-based Fortress Investment Group, which it acquired from SoftBank last May. The acquisition came a month after the two firms announced a partnership to deploy $1B into private credit, with a focus on credit and special situations opportunities for co-investment.
Last March, Mubadala was also part of a $215M capital raise at Miami-based real estate credit platform 3650 Capital.
Mubadala deployed 34% more capital in 2024 than in the prior year, and its five-year rate of return is 10.1%, the fund reported in May. Its investments beyond real estate include artificial intelligence, healthcare and advanced manufacturing as part of what the fund calls its future-focused sectors strategy.
Fletcher is joining the fund after spending a little over a year as a senior vice president at Dream, which has roughly $28B in assets under management across most CRE asset classes.
Prior to that role, Fletcher spent just under six years in capital management roles at Starlight Investments, a Toronto-based CRE investment management firm with assets in Canada, the U.S. and the UK.
