Mr. Valero has been in the retail real estate business since 1985. Most recently he served as the President and COO of Equity One (NYSE: EQY). Mr. Valero joined Equity One as a partner in 1994, when Equity One, then a small private company, acquired Valero’s South Florida retail operation. Under his direction, Equity One grew from a handful of retail properties, to an owner of over 200 shopping centers comprising over 20 million square feet of retail space in 14 states. In May 1998, Equity One went public as a self managed REIT, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market cap of $90 million. By the time Mr. Valero left Equity One in December 2006, Equity One’s total market cap grew to over $2.7 billion.
Mr. Valero is a prominent figure in the retail real estate industry and throughout his career has developed close relationships with major national retailers, leading members of the investment community, property owners, developers and operators. Mr. Valero holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Nova University.

Prior to joining Global, Mr. Merkur served as Senior Vice President and Director of Transactions at Equity One, where he led the acquisition and disposition team for over 8 years. Since 2003, Mr. Merkur and his team underwrote and executed 57 single asset acquisitions representing over 5.3 million square feet of retail space and over $900 million of asset value, as well as executed 35 disposition transactions of approximately 6 million square feet and $600 million of asset value.
Mr. Merkur brings over 30 years of experience in all aspects of real estate investment, management and finance. Prior to joining Equity One he owned and operated Dartmouth Realty Corp, a commercial real estate brokerage and consulting firm. Prior to that he was a regional asset manager for a partnership of J.E. Robert Co. and Goldman Sachs. Mr. Merkur holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial psychology from City College of New York and a certificate of real estate from New York University.

Prior to joining Global, Mr. Zitvar served as the Director of Capital Markets of Equity One. In this capacity he and his team were responsible for maintaining the corporate model, which generated Equity One’s Wall-Street projections, maintaining Equity One’s $275 million line of credit, executing all hedging transactions and participating in three public notes issuances, totaling $370 million. Mr. Zitvar worked regularly with the rating agencies, as well as with the investment banks on various portfolio and corporate transactions. Prior to joining Equity One, Mr. Zitvar was a partner at MayTree Ventures, the private equity arm of the Israeli Meitav group, a money management group with over $3 billion under management. Mr. Zitvar holds an MBA with honors from the Wharton School, majoring in real estate and finance, and an MA in Economics and BA in Computer Science and Economics both from Tel Aviv University.

Mr. Buth has over 20 years of extensive leasing, management, and development experience exclusively in the shopping center industry. During his career he has been instrumental in executing over 700 leases which totaled more than 2 million square feet.
Mr. Buth’s enormous pride in establishing and maintaining long term relationships with retailers has unconditionally benefitted the leasing of the shopping center portfolios he has managed.
Most recently, he was the Vice President of Leasing of the North Florida Region for Equity One Realty & Management, Inc., a subsidiary of Equity One, Inc. Mr. Buth oversaw the leasing activity of 40 properties encompassing 4 million square feet throughout the greater Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville markets.