BE—150 Dean's Lecture: Dr Seek Ngee Huat - The Global Real Estate Industry in Transition

The global real estate industry is entering a period of ground-breaking changes which could potentially transform its business operations and practices as we know them today.  Over the last 40 years the global market has evolved to the level of complexity and sophistication which now has a vastly expanded investment universe, offering many more choices to meet different risk-return profiles. However, macro forces at work now seem to suggest that the industry is transitioning into a new era about which we can only speculate. The lecture will provide a historical perspective of the key changes and trends that brought us here today and explore future transformational changes.

About Dr Seek Ngee Huat

Dr Seek Ngee Huat is Chairman of the Institute of Real Estate and Urban Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he is also Practice Professor of Real Estate. He is also
Chairrman of GLP IM Holdings Limited and a board member of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., VCredit Holdings Limited and the Centre for Liveable Cities. He is a senior advisor to Frasers Property Ltd and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.

He was previously President of GIC Real Estate Pte Ltd, a board director of GIC Private Limited, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Singapore, Chairman of Global Logistic Properties Ltd and a senior partner at Jones Lang Wootton (currently Jones Lang LaSalle) based in Sydney.

Dr Seek is a current Global Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and was formerly its Asia Pacific Chairman. He had served on the real estate and business advisory boards of various universities, including Peking, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia and Fundacao Dom Cabral (Brazil). His other industry appointments included being a board director of the Pension Real Estate Association (US) and a member of the Land Sub-committee of the 2009 Singapore Government Economic Strategy Committee.

Dr. Seek was conferred the Singapore Public Administration Gold Medal in 2007, the NUS Outstanding Service Award in 2015 and the NUS Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 2011. He has a BSc (Estate Management), University of Singapore; MSc (Business Administration), University of British Columbia; and a PhD (Urban Research), Australian
National University.

This Dean's Series Lecture event is being programmed as part of the University of Melbourne's BE—150 program, celebrating 150 years of built environment education.