Power 100 2025: Who Jumped the Most On the List?
Yes, the 1920s were about jazz. But if Jimmy Cagney movies have taught us anything, the `20s were also about gangsters who did anything they could to get to the top.
A number of veterans of this list made their own significant leaps toward the top last year.
Nobody would say that Tishman Speyer, whose reach extends well beyond its city of origin (New York) to all across the globe, isn’t one of the great real estate firms. And in 2024 Tishman Speyer was an extremely respectable No. 25 on our Power 100 list.
But when they’ve managed to secure $6 billion in just two CMBS refinancings — $3.5 billion for Rockefeller Center, making it the biggest SASB office deal in history, and $2.85 billion for The Spiral — we have to wonder if Rob Speyer has been taking lessons from Edward G. Robinson. In any event, it seemed only fair that Tishman Speyer break into the top 10 this year.
Few people in real estate have more of a badass rep than Gary Barnett. Every time he’s been counted out, the Extell founder proved his critics wrong. And for about a month earlier this year it didn’t feel like a single week went by without a major purchase or sale by Extell. Some of this was to build the towers that Barnett is famous for. But also included in this was a pending $450 million sale to… Chanel for a 65,000-square-foot retail condo? Barnett was good for the No. 12 spot, up from No. 42 last year.
Vornado has had its ups and downs over the years, and in 2024 they wound up a relatively decent No. 31, but that was a drop from the days when Vornado CEO Steven Roth would regularly appear in the top 10. After inking three of the top 10 New York City leases last year, we felt Roth needed to vault into the No. 16 slot this year.
Nathan Berman was always one of FiDi’s go-to adaptive reuse guys. This was good for the No. 56 spot on the list in 2024, the tail end of the COVID era. But this year? When he’s got his fingerprints on nearly every office-to-residential conversion we can think of? (Including nearly 1,600 units in one single shot at the former Pfizer headquarters near Grand Central, which is the largest adaptive reuse in the city’s history so far.) That sounds like it’s worth at least a 21-spot jump to No. 35.
We’re always a little wary when someone on Power 100 steps out of a previously important role and into a new one. Chad Tredway had long been a favorite on Power Finance and Power 100. Last year, when he returned to J.P. Morgan Chase after a stint at his own boutique investment platform, Trio Investment Group, in the spirit of wait-and-see we gave him the 72 spot.
After Tredway assembled an all-star team and raked in over $1 billion in capital in his core fund with zero redemptions, we decided we’d seen enough. This year, Tredway was good for a 50-spot leap to No. 22.
Max Gross can be reached at mgross@commercialobserver.com.
