Oxford has a $79-billion portfolio of global real estate assets totalling 142 million square feet, including Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre.Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press
Real estate investor and developer Oxford Properties Group has named Eric Plesman as its next chief executive officer, hiring back the company’s former head of North America from another Ontario pension plan.
Mr. Plesman will start on Nov. 3 as president and CEO of Oxford, which is owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System pension fund manager.
He is leaving his role as head of global real estate at the $123-billion Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan to return to Oxford, and takes over from executive chair Daniel Fournier.
Mr. Fournier, a real estate veteran, came out of retirement in 2023 to lead the company through a turbulent period for real estate markets.
Oxford Properties buys CPP Investments’ stake in office portfolio in Western Canada
Oxford has a $79-billion portfolio of global real estate assets totalling 142 million square feet. It owns notable Canadian properties such as Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre and the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta, and has developed prominent office and retail complexes abroad such as Hudson Yards in New York.
Before he joined HOOPP in 2021, Mr. Plesman spent a decade at Oxford, including as head of Canada and executive vice-president for North America.
“Eric’s impressive investment acumen and leadership skills make him the ideal person to build on Oxford’s 65-year legacy of investing in, developing and managing high-quality real estate,” OMERS CEO Blake Hutcheson said in a statement.
HOOPP has named Chris Holtved to succeed Mr. Plesman as head of global real estate, effective immediately, in another homecoming. Mr. Holtved left HOOPP in 2023 and worked for a brief period as a real estate consultant.
After Mr. Plesman takes over at Oxford in November, Mr. Fournier will continue to provide “strategic counsel” to the company into 2026. Mr. Fournier was seen as a steady hand at Oxford, with decades of experience, having previously led real estate investor Ivanhoe Cambridge.
Mr. Hutcheson called Mr. Fournier “one of the best and most selfless leaders I have ever worked with,” in his statement.
Like many large real estate investors, OMERS has wrestled with a challenging environment as high interest rates have put pressure on property values and raised the cost of borrowing.
The pension fund manager’s real estate arm eked out a 1.1-per-cent gain in the first half of 2025, after reporting a 4.9-per-cent loss last year.
Mr. Hutcheson has said that Oxford’s operating income and leasing rates have been solid in spite of the upheaval in markets, and that high-quality office buildings would eventually prove their value. (Lesser-quality office buildings saw their values drop sharply coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
“Even during the worst days of COVID, my view was, never count out that asset class,” Mr. Hutcheson said in an interview last month.