Now and Always: Hilco Global Leadership Values Drive its Success

Hilco Global is a giant in the financial services industry, providing solutions across more than 20 business units spanning a diverse range of offerings, including valuation, monetization, advisory and financing solutions. For more than 37 years, Hilco’s position as a standard-setter within the financial services ecosystem has been built on the values emanating from the top of the organization.

Jeffrey B. Hecktman, founder and CEO, led Hilco from its start as an asset valuation/appraisal and disposition firm in 1987 to its status as an international financial solution holding company. Throughout its journey, Hilco has strived to provide innovative transaction solutions that create positive outcomes for all stakeholders, from clients and employees to the communities in which the company operates. It pursues these goals with a dedication to maintaining its core values which include a family mindset, business ethics/integrity, fun and, of course, financial success.

“Independently and in partnership with clients, the leaders of our diverse platform of financial services companies and their teams are fully committed to achieving sustainable growth,” Hecktman says. “Both the long-term stability of the global economy and society’s collective wellbeing depend on it.”

Having an experienced leader like Hecktman at the helm certainly helps drive Hilco’s success, but the firm understands developing new leaders is critical to effectively pursuing long-term growth and prosperity. That’s why, in late 2023, Hilco appointed company veterans Neil Aaronson and Henry Foster as co-presidents.

Aaronson, focused on Hilco business operations in North and South America, originally joined Hilco in 2007 as an executive vice president before assuming the role of CEO of Hilco Real Estate. Meanwhile, Foster serves as the CEO of Hilco Capital UK, growing the company’s financial investment and advisory businesses across the UK, continental Europe and Australia. Both have added the co-president role to their current duties.

“This is an important step in assigning critical global management responsibilities to a new generation of leadership who will help us continue growing and expanding our financial services platform in new and exciting ways,” Hecktman says. “Both Neil and Henry are representative of the depth of exceptional talent and management leadership that Hilco has attracted and empowered to lead each of our 20-plus Hilco operating units over the past 37 years.”

To further strengthen its already deep leadership ranks, over the last year, Hilco added James H. M. Sprayregen and David Kurtz as vice chairmen, joining chief operating officer and vice chairman John P. Chen. The trio operate within the firm’s newly created Office of the Chairman, a “new and collaborative executive leadership team at the Hilco Global holding company” that reports directly to Hecktman.

“Having known Hilco Global my entire professional life, I’ve always been impressed by the breadth and depth of their solutions-focused platform and their deep relationships with the top executives at third-party advisors,” Sprayregen says. “These relationships provide an incredible foundation for me to contribute and to play a key role in taking Hilco Global to the next level of growth and expansion.”

Hilco also is dedicated to corporate social responsibility, prioritizing environmental, social and governance excellence at all levels across its firm, ensuring this ethos permeates investment decisions, corporate culture and philanthropic endeavors. For the past 12 years Hilco’s real estate redevelopment OPCO has been transforming more than 5,000 acres of industrial real estate projects across Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC and more, incorporating green technologies, maximizing the recycling of existing materials, creating thousands of new jobs and building more resilient and sustainable communities. •