Georgetown McDonough

Steers Luminaries 2026: A Fireside Chat with Marc Ganzi on Powering the Digital Economy

The Steers Luminaries 2026 fireside chat featured Marc Ganzi, the founder of Global Tower Partners and current head of DigitalBridge, discussing how digital infrastructure has moved from a niche real‑estate niche to a cornerstone of the modern economy. Ganzi traced his career from a 1995 startup that anticipated the explosion of 1900 MHz spectrum, through Apex and Eureka—companies that turned tower sites and office‑building fiber into billion‑dollar assets—and highlighted the industry‑wide shift toward REIT structures and securitized debt. He recalled rolling up 12,000 towers in a decade, pioneering a private‑letter‑ruling REIT classification, and engineering the first CMBS deals for tower owners, which lowered borrowing costs from 8% to roughly 4.5% and set a template followed by American Tower, Crown and SBA. These innovations have turned towers, fiber and data‑center sites into liquid, high‑yield investments, attracting institutional capital and enabling the rapid rollout of 5G and edge‑computing networks that underpin today’s digital economy.