After 15 years as CFO at EdR and its predecessor Allen & O’Hara, Randy Brown stepped down as CFO June 30.
On Monday, the Memphis-based student housing REIT announced that Bill Brewer has joined the company as executive vice president and CFO.
Brewer comes to EdR after five years as executive vice president and CFO for Sedgwick Claims Management Services, a provider of technology-enabled claims and productivity management solutions. Before that, Brewer was with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 24 years where he focused on a client base that consisted primarily of public and private real estate investment trusts across a variety of asset types.
“I have worked with Bill in a variety of endeavors during the last 20 years,” said Randy Churchey, EdR president and CEO said in a press release. “With his leadership and financial experience at the helm of our finance team, EdR will be well-positioned to continue growing while maintaining our strong financial discipline.”
Drew Koester, who led the EdR financial group during a time of active financial transactions as its interim principal financial officer and treasurer, will continue to be an integral part of EdR’s leadership team, according to the release.
Brown helped guide the company through its initial public offering (IPO) in 2005. The IPO created a REIT that focused solely on collegiate housing ownership and development that is today known as EdR. Brown's tenure also included buying student housing portfolios from Dallas-based JPI and Atlanta-based Place Properties and the challenge of refinancing the debt for those properties after the credit market froze in 2008. Later EdR completed a complex deal to expand and revitalize the University of Kentucky's aging student housing portfolio.
