FivePoint Holdings, a major land developer of planned communities of coastal areas across California, including Irvine’s Great Park neighborhood, announced in a recent statement that the company’s founder, Emile Haddad, will be stepping away from his role as CEO, president, and chairman.
Despite stepping away from his roles in leading the company, Haddad will still remain as a member of the Board of Directors and will become senior adviser, where he will be able to pursue initiatives and focus on the strategic direction of the company as well as new ventures and initiatives the company may consider pursuing in the future, Erik Higgins, chief financial officer for FivePoint, told The Epoch Times.
“[Haddad] is stepping down from his day-to-day responsibilities as a public company CEO, but he’s not going anywhere,” Higgins said.
“He founded the company in 2009, we went public in 2017, and the company is established, it’s really accomplished a lot and is on really solid footing. We’ve got great irreplaceable assets, a very strong balance sheet, and we have a management team that’s proven that we can execute.
“So from Emile’s perspective, he’s very passionate about deal-making, visionary thinking, strategic thinking, and I think stepping away from his day-to-day role as a CEO is going to enable him to pursue initiatives that will help propel FivePoint to the next level.”
While Haddad steps down on Sept. 30, the company ultimately decided not to name a new executive officer and instead name Stuart Miller as executive chairman and Lynn Jochim as president of the company. Miller will be working with Haddad on the strategic direction of the company while Jochim will focus on running the operations of the company.
“We’re just reconfiguring in a way that will take advantage of everybody’s strengths, really to help us drive shareholder value,” Higgins said.
“Between Lynn, Stuart, and Emile, we’ve really got all the components in place; those are the roles that a typical CEO would fill, and the board just didn’t see value added in naming a CEO or conducting a search when we’ve got Emile, Stuart, and Lynn all working together to accomplish really what amounts to the same mission.”
Higgins said in the short term, people won’t be seeing much change in the direction of the company, but in the medium and long term under the new leadership, the company looks forward to getting to “the next level.”
FivePoint—which has developments in Orange County, Los Angeles County, and San Francisco County—is developing areas that are designed to include 40,000 residential homes and approximately 23 million square feet of commercial space, making the company one of the largest developers of mixed-use communities in coastal California.
