I believed that the fundamentals of real estate were universal. That is, issues of supply and demand, demographics, capital flows, and so on were as … - Sam Zell

Boards that don’t exercise an ownership approach are complicit in poor-performing companies.

Risk is the ultimate differentiator. I have always had a deep and complex relationship with it. I am not a reckless person, but taking risks is really the only way to consistently achieve above-average returns — in life as well as in investments. My father proved that when he left Poland. I am probably more comfortable with risk than most people. That’s because I do as much as I can to understand it. To me, risk-taking rests on the ability to see all the variables and then identify the ones that will make or break you.

Once again, I listened as people told me I was nuts. Emerging markets were largely considered untouchable by foreign investors at the time. They were still under the shadow of loan defaults from the 1980s, and Mexico’s recent Tequila Crisis (the devaluation of the peso) had triggered widespread currency devaluation across Latin America. To top it off, many emerging market countries were reeling from the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and Russia’s default in 1998. Emerging markets at the time were not for the faint of heart. For me, of course, that presented an environment with no competition for assets.