Jonathan Pruzan, former chief operating officer at Morgan Stanley, is joining single-family rental giant Pretium as the company seeks to continue its rapid growth.
(Bloomberg) — Jonathan Pruzan, former chief operating officer at Morgan Stanley, is joining single-family rental giant Pretium as the company seeks to continue its rapid growth.
Pruzan, once seen as a contender to succeed James Gorman as chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley, will be president of Pretium, the company said Tuesday in a statement. He will report to Don Mullen, founder and CEO.
Pruzan left Morgan Stanley earlier this year after a 28-year run at the bank, during which time he was a close adviser to Gorman and played a key role in the bank’s recent acquisitions including the deals for E*Trade and Eaton Vance.
The hire signals Pretium’s desire to keep growing at a time when a sluggish housing market is limiting opportunities to buy houses. Pruzan will become a member of Pretium’s executive committee. The Wall Street Journal reported the move earlier.
“Jon is part of an elite class of financial services leaders, having excelled as an operating executive and a dealmaker,” Mullen said in a statement. “We look forward to benefiting from Jon’s long history of success driving organic growth and identifying compelling acquisitions and partnerships to take the firm to the next level.”
Pruzan will also help Pretium weigh potential acquisitions as it looks to expand into a broader array of real estate investments. The firm, which has more than $50 billion in assets under management, also operates corporate and structured credit strategies that could offer more avenues for growth.
“There’s a clear consolidation wave coming in asset management,” Pruzan said in an interview. “There’s a really interesting opportunity, not only in the single-family rental and residential space, but more broadly.”
Mullen, 65, spent decades running credit businesses at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. before he left in 2012 to found Pretium. He built up Pretium’s real estate business rapidly during the pandemic, buying rental houses in large transactions with competitors, homebuilders and other industry players. Higher interest rates over the past year have made it harder to expand the company’s rental portfolio.
Pruzan sees a chance for Pretium to step into the gap created by a pullback in regional banks, which have long been an important source of funding for real estate loans including construction and commercial property debt.
“The small banks’ ecosystem is a significant provider of debt and equity to real estate developers and real estate more broadly,” he said. “Between the outflows of deposits and incremental capital requirements, they’re going to step back.”
(Updates with statement in second paragraph, Mullen comment in fifth paragraph, and Pruzan interview starting in sixth paragraph.)
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