I guess I’m not too surprised that Ventas announced their intentions to acquire Cogdell Spencer today. Cogdell has been struggling since they bought Marshal Erdman back in January of 2008. Investors invest in REITs because they want to own an interest in real estate not design firms. Despite this fact, the Cogdell Spencer leadership, lead at the time by Frank Spencer, moved forward with their purchase of Erdman.
My guess is that investors never really understood Erdman. The Erdman purchase decision was magnified by many quarters of negative EPS. Eventually Mr. Spencer was replaced and the story apparently ends with Ventas as the owner of Cogdell’s real estate and the future of Erdman up in the air.
If you’ve read previous blog posts on the old REIT Media, you know that I’m a fan of southern REITs. So this acquisition is sad to me. It marks another southern REIT based in Charlotte, NC winding down executive leadership from the South. From Ventas’ perspective it only makes sense to manage the Cogdell assets from their corporate HQ in Chicago.