Robert “Bob” Zerbst, a South Carolina native turned San Francisco Bay Area business leader, has passed away.
Zerbst is remembered for founding institutional real estate investment company Piedmont Realty Advisors in the 1980s. After about a decade, the firm merged with RREEF Funds (now part of DWS), where Zerbst became a partner in San Francisco.
In 1997, Zerbst was recruited to be CEO of CBRE Investment Management, based in Los Angeles, according to the obituary published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 4. During the next 13 years — nine years as CEO and two years as chairman — Zerbst guided business operations as the U.S.-focused company expanded to Europe and Asia, scaling it into a global investment platform.
After his departure from CBRE Investmen
