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Christopher Cole is an American real estate developer and investor. He is best known as founder and Executive Chairman of Cole Real Estate Investments, Inc. Cole was engaged in the structuring and management of real estate investment programs since founding Cole Real Estate Investments in 1979. After going public in 2013, Cole Real Estate Investments, Inc. traded on NYSE under the symbol Cole.

Early life and education
Cole graduated from Mercer Island High School and came to Arizona State University on athletic scholarship. Cole attended W. P. Carey School of Business at the University of Arizona in Temple, Arizona. By his junior year, Cole left college to pursue a real estate career.

Real estate career
Cole founded Cole Real Estate Investments Inc., formally Cole Capital, a company that formed and managed over 100 real estate investment, owning real estate with a combined acquisition and development cost in excess of $15 billion. He played an active role in building the company over a 30 year period from a small, privately held business into a national, NYSE public company with assets across 50 states, over 400 employees and investment grade tenants such as Walgreens, CVS, Home Depot, Lowe's, and Wal-Mart. In January 2013, Cole Credit Property Trust II, one of the non-traded REIT’s under the Cole umbrella, and Spirit Realty Inc., agreed on merging their companies to create the second largest publicly traded triple net lease REIT in the United States with an enterprise value of approximately $7.1 billion. The merger was completed in June, 2013. In March 2013, Cole Credit Property Trust III, another non-traded REIT in the Cole portfolio, purchased its asset manager and sponsor company, Cole Holdings Corp., for $127 million in cash and stock. According to investment bank Robert A. Stanger & Co. Inc., the REIT was the second largest in market capitalization with close to $4.8 billion in equity raised by investors after its initial launch in 2009 and had $7.4 billion in real estate assets. This combined company would now be called Cole Real Estate Investments, Inc. Later that year, he took Cole Real Estate Investments, Inc. public in June 2013 and then sold the company for $7.2 billion in 2014 to American Realty Capital Properties, Inc., thus creating one of the largest net lease REIT’s in the country with approximately $21.5 billion in assets.

Community involvement
Cole and his wife, Jennifer Mee Cole, have been donors for Phoenix Country Day School via the THRIVE Campaign and were instrumental in building  Shin Center of Art, Science & Innovation, a new academic campus for sciences, technology and arts. In May 2007, Mr. Cole was presented with the Distinguished Achievement Award from W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University for his contributions to the school of business, the university and his community.