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Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund Names New CEO and President

The board of Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund Inc., a publicly registered daily NAV REIT (NASDAQ: ZDPFAX; ZDPFEX; ZDPFIX; ZDPFWX), appointed Dwight Merriman III to serve as the company’s chief executive officer, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Merriman is replacing Jeffrey Johnson as CEO.

In addition, the board named Rajat Dhanda to serve as president, who succeeds J. Michael Lynch, who will now serve as the company’s managing director – office. The appointments went into effect on April 13th.

Merriman and Dhanda both serve as members of the investment committee of Dividend Capital Total Advisors, the REIT’s advisor.

Merriman has more than 30 years of real estate investment and development experience and serves as the head of real estate for Black Creek Group. He is also the chief executive officer and a member of the board of Industrial Property Trust Inc., a Dividend Capital-sponsored non-traded REIT, as well as a member of the board of Industrial Property Advisors LLC, the advisor of IPT. He also serves in similar capacities at other affiliated companies.

Merriman is the former managing director and the chief investment officer of Stockbridge Capital Group LLC, a San Francisco-based real estate investment management company. He was a managing director of RREEF Funds, where he started CalSmart, a $1.2 billion value-added real estate investment fund with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

He received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Southern California and a master’s in business administration from the Anderson School at the University of California at Los Angeles. Merriman a member of the Urban Land Institute.

Dhanda serves as president of Black Creek Group and previously spent 26 years at Morgan Stanley, where he sat on the firm’s management and risk committee for his last eight years. Most recently, he was head of investment products and services in wealth management, responsible for all of the products distributed by Morgan Stanley’s financial advisors. Dhanda holds a bachelor’s degree in both business economics, and organizational behavior and management from Brown University.

Lynch, who has more than 30 years of real estate experience, served as the president of Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund since 2013. He previously served as chief investment officer of Arden Realty, Inc., where he oversaw capital market activities for a $4.5 billion office and industrial portfolio. He has also served as senior vice president of investments for Equity Office Properties Trust and serves as an advisory board member for American Homes 4 Rent. Lynch holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Mount Saint Mary’s College and a master’s degree in architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund, based in Denver, Colorado, invests in a diversified portfolio of commercial real estate assets. The company’s original offering went effective in January 2006 and has raised more than $2.3 billion in investor equity through multiple follow-on offerings. The latest offering was declared effective in September 2015 and has raised approximately $114.6 million from the sale of approximately 15.4 million shares.

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