Ko Detailed Bio
Ko Iwahori has over 30 years of experience in commercial real estate, having served in various senior roles with Mitsubishi Estate Company (MEC). Ko’s areas of expertise include capital markets, fund management, fund equity raises and all aspects of property acquisition, development and disposition. 

Until leaving MEC to co-found Acadia Capital, Ko was a Deputy General Manager of the Investment Management Businesses of MEC, where he was responsible for investor relationships and business development for Mitsubishi Jisho Investment Advisors (MJIA), a Tokyo based core property fund manager and TA Realty, a Boston-based value add property fund manager for whom his team raised over US$100 million from Japan and Asia institutional investors.

Ko previously served as Group General Manager of Cross Border Investment Advisory at Mitsubishi Real Estate Services, MEC’s Tokyo-based brokerage arm, where he provided investment advisory services to multinational companies and fund managers investing to and from Japan, the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and mainland China.
 
The many major projects that Ko has sourced or managed include:
  • MEC’s 30% equity commitment to Lendlease on its AUD1.5 billion Circular Quay Tower development in the Sydney CBD;
  • Clevo’s acquisition of a JPY10 billion Japan residential property portfolio:
  • MEC’s JPY20 billion acquisition of Bell Commons in Tokyo through a long-term senior management relationship with Angelo Gordon;
  • the successful disposition of the Park Habio Shinjuku East Side Tower, an MEC 700-unit apartment tower development project;
  • the Shenyang Park Outlet mall development joint venture project with Symphony Holding Ltd., a Hong Kong listed company;
  • assembling a 70,000 sq. ft., JPY40 billion land acquisition in central Tokyo that now serves as Pembroke Roppongi Tri-Seven; and
  • a joint project with Urban Design Systems (UDS) to successfully reposition four Prudential Real Estate properties into life-style apartments commanding above market rent premiums and awarded a “Good Design Award” by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion.
Ko holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Waseda University.  For his MBA year at Stanford, he was the sole recipient of MEC's full scholarship to pursue an overseas MBA. 

In 1992, Ko successfully completed the Uniform CPA exam in California. He is a Government of Tokyo licensed real estate broker and an ARES certified Master in asset securitization. 

Ko serves on the Executive Committee and Programing Committee of Urban Land Institute (ULI) and is an active member of the Asian Association for Investors in Non-listed Real Estate Vehicles (ANREV). He is a frequent speaker at international real estate industry conferences.



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