New York

NEW YORK CITY—Clarion Partners cofounder Stephen Furnary is stepping down as the investment manager's CEO, according to published reports. Furnary will remain as executive chairman while turning over the CEO's chair to president and CIO David Gilbert. The change in leadership is effective May 1, PERE reported Monday.

Furnary will work on enhancing Clarion's investment offerings, remaining on its investment committee and working with parent company Legg Mason, according to PERE. “This succession has been carefully programmed over the past few years, and Clarion is truly blessed that we have such depth in management across the firm to handle this transition seamlessly,” Furnary wrote in an e-mail to industry contacts earlier this month; PERE obtained a copy.

The leadership handoff occurs about a year after a management-led recapitalization of Clarion that saw it trade to Baltimore-based Legg Mason for $585 million. Furnary founded what was then Jones Lang Wootton Realty Advisors in 1982 with former Citi colleague John Weisz. The two cofounders bought out Jones Lang Wootton's share of JLWRA in 1995 and renamed the operation Clarion Partners. The firm currently has approximately US$44 billion in real estate assets under management globally.

Gilbert joined Clarion in 2007 and, in addition to serving in his dual leadership capacity, also oversees its investment research group. Before joining the firm, he was a managing director at JPMorgan Investment Management, and prior to that was real estate head of JPMorgan Partners, the private equity arm of what was then Chase Manhattan Bank.