Hines said on Oct. 2 that Adam Hines will become co-chief executive officer alongside Laura Hines-Pierce on Jan. 1, 2027, and that Jeff Hines will hand over day-to-day management of the Houston-based firm to become chairman.
The announcement reshuffles the top of a privately held manager that describes itself as a global real assets platform and says it oversees approximately $91 billion of assets with 4,600 employees in 29 countries. It also hands control of the firm’s vehicle for individual-investor capital to the younger generation.
Four moves, one effective date
Every change takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. Adam Hines joins Hines-Pierce as co-CEO; the company said Hines-Pierce has held the co-CEO title for more than five years. David Steinbach, the firm’s global chief investment officer, becomes Hines’ first president. Alfonso Munk succeeds Steinbach as global CIO. Jeff Hines becomes chairman.
Hines was specific about how authority will be divided, which is the part of any co-CEO arrangement that tends to matter most. Hines-Pierce and Adam Hines “will lead the firm together, set its strategic direction and priorities, and make major firmwide decisions,” the release says. Steinbach will “lead execution of the strategy across the business,” with the global CIO, the global head of real estate, the chief financial officer and functional leaders all reporting to him. Munk will be “accountable for investment strategy and performance” across the platform.
Jeff Hines, as chairman, will “step back from day-to-day management and focus primarily on advising the Co-CEOs,” according to the release. The firm said it will also create an independent External Advisory Board to give the co-CEOs outside counsel, and it set clear limits on that body: the advisory board “will have no governance authority,” and the authority of Hines’ investment committee “will remain unchanged.”
The income trust changes hands too
The transition extends to Hines Global Income Trust, the REIT the firm sponsors and uses to raise money from individual and private-wealth investors. Hines-Pierce replaces Jeff Hines as the trust’s chief executive and chair of its board, and Adam Hines joins the board as a director.
That vehicle is not a sideline. Hines Global Income Trust reported $6.14 billion of total assets as of June 30, 2026, in the quarterly report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 14, 2026, up from $5.93 billion at the end of March. Hines says it manages money for institutional and private wealth clients alike, and the trust is its main vehicle for the second group.
The growth claims behind the promotions
Hines tied the appointments to its own performance figures, which the release presents without external verification. The company said its discretionary business has grown at approximately a 20% compound annual rate, dating that growth to 2018, under Hines-Pierce and Adam Hines. It also credited Adam Hines with helping build and scale the firm’s private wealth business, which it said has doubled in size.
“Hines has always been at its best when we look beyond the current cycle and build for what comes next,” Jeff Hines said in the release. “Laura has already been leading Hines as Co-CEO for five years, and Adam has helped shape important parts of our growth across Europe, private wealth and capital formation.”
He added: “This is the right moment for me to step back from day-to-day management and for Laura and Adam to lead Hines forward, supported by David, Alfonso and the depth of talent across the firm.”
In a joint statement, Hines-Pierce and Adam Hines framed the firm’s direction as a deliberate move past conventional property categories. “The platform is already operating at scale, and the strategy we have been building is working,” they said. “Capital, infrastructure and human activity are converging in new ways across the built world, expanding the opportunity set beyond traditional definitions of real estate.”
Steinbach, the incoming president, put the case for the new structure in operational terms. “Scale creates advantage only when it improves execution,” he said. “Our opportunity is to connect what our teams know across markets, strategies and functions so local insight becomes shared intelligence and firmwide capabilities create more opportunity on the ground.”
What the “real assets” label is doing
Hines now describes its business as spanning residential, logistics, office, data centers and infrastructure β a list that reads differently from the trophy-office development work the firm built its name on after its founding in 1957. The release says the appointments “build on the strong momentum Hines has generated since adopting its real assets strategy.”
That widening maps onto where construction and investment dollars have actually moved. Spending on data center construction ran 73% above year-earlier levels in August on Census Bureau figures, and managers with industrial and logistics mandates have continued to raise large pools of capital, as Stonelake’s $1 billion industrial fund close showed.
On our reading, the structure Hines is installing is less about which family member holds which title than about separating strategy from execution at a firm whose mandate has widened faster than its reporting lines. Two co-CEOs set direction, a president runs the business, and one global CIO owns investment performance across sectors that until recently sat in separate silos. That is a bet that a broader commercial real estate mandate can be managed as one platform rather than a federation of specialist teams.
Hines gave no indication that the changes are tied to any transaction, fundraising event or financial result, describing them instead as the next step in a planned leadership transition.
