"We're very happy with earnings for quarter," Rakowich tells GlobeSt.com. "We had very strong perfomance in a weak economy. And we had ancicipated our earnings would be down a bit."

He notes the company will be investing $1 billion to $1.5 billion in China over the next three to four years, and and equal amount in Japan during that time period. Conventional economic wisdom has it that China will grow in future decades, but Japan is something less expected. The depressed economy in Japan plans to the strength of ProLogis, he says.

"To a large degree that is a plus for us," he tells GlobeSt.com. "One of the reasons their economy is so bad, because they have an inefficient distribution network. It costs a lot more to move goods in Japan than it does in the U.S. We see the new for new modern, efficient warehouses in Japan that have not existed before."