
R Steven Hamner
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Board Member
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- Full Name
- R. Steven Hamner
- Title
- Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Director (Board Member) — Co-Founder
- Firm
- Medical Properties Trust, Inc. (NYSE: MPW)
- Firm Type
- Publicly traded, self-advised healthcare real estate investment trust (REIT) — net-lease hospital real estate
- Investment Stage
- Institutional / operating-company (not early-stage venture) — sale-leaseback, mortgage, and acquisition financing of established hospital and behavioral-health facilities
- Check Size
- Large institutional transactions (tens of millions to multi-billion-dollar hospital portfolio deals)
- Target Company Profile
- Established hospital systems and specialty inpatient operators seeking to monetize real estate via long-term net leases
- Sector Focus
- Healthcare real estate — acute-care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation, long-term acute care, and behavioral health facilities
- Geographic Focus
- United States and Europe (notably the U.K., Germany, and other European markets)
- Location
- Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Background
R. Steven Hamner is a co-founder of Medical Properties Trust, Inc. (MPT), a Birmingham, Alabama–based REIT that pioneered the financing of hospital real estate through net-lease and sale-leaseback structures. He has served as the company's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since its formation in September 2003, and was elected to the board of directors shortly before MPT's 2005 IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker: MPW). He continues in the EVP/CFO and director roles today, having signed the company's 2025 SEC filings (10-Q and 10-K) as principal financial officer.
Before co-founding MPT, Hamner was Managing Director of Transaction Analysis LLC (October 2001–March 2004), which provided interim and project-oriented accounting and consulting services to commercial real estate owners and their advisors. From June 1998 to September 2001 he was Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of United Investors Realty Trust, a publicly traded REIT. Earlier in his career he spent roughly a decade with the accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young LLP and its predecessor firms.
Hamner is a certified public accountant (CPA) and earned a B.S. in Accounting from Louisiana State University in 1979. Over two decades at MPT he helped scale the company into one of the world's largest owners of hospital real estate, at its peak holding roughly $10 billion-plus in assets across hundreds of hospital properties in the U.S. and Europe. He is a recurring industry speaker — for example on "The Investment Case for Post-Acute and Specialty Inpatient Real Estate" — at healthcare real estate and investment conferences such as Revista and Healthcare Business International (HBI).
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests through MPT's balance sheet, not as a personal angel; the "product" is capital for hospital operators who want to unlock the value of their real estate.
- Core structure is the net-lease / sale-leaseback: MPT buys hospital real estate and leases it back to the operator under long-term, triple-net leases, and also provides mortgage and acquisition financing.
- Sector concentration in hospitals and specialty inpatient facilities — acute care, inpatient rehab, long-term acute care, and behavioral health — rather than diversified commercial real estate.
- Geographic breadth across the U.S. and Europe, having been an early mover in acquiring hospital portfolios in the U.K., Germany, and other markets.
- Underwrites the durability of operator rent coverage and facility-level cash flow; the thesis rests on hospitals being mission-critical, hard-to-replace infrastructure with long lease terms.
Notable Investments
- Steward Health Care — MPT's largest tenant and defining relationship; MPT financed Steward's hospital real estate, holding roughly $6.6 billion in long-term rent obligations. Steward filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 6, 2024, one of the largest hospital bankruptcies in decades.
- Healthcare Systems of America, HonorHealth, Quorum Health, Insight Health, and College Health — replacement operators MPT signed in 2024 to lease and run 17 former Steward hospitals across five states after Steward's collapse.
- Priory Group (U.K.) — behavioral health operator; part of MPT's large European hospital footprint.
- Circle Health / Circle Group (U.K.) and other European hospital portfolios — reflecting MPT's international expansion.
- Ernest Health, Prospect Medical, Springstone, and Adeptus Health — U.S. hospital and specialty-facility operators historically financed within MPT's portfolio.
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