Rudy Prio Touzet

Rudy Prio Touzet is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Banyan Street Capital, a Miami-based commercial real estate investment firm he established in 2007. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has been involved in office investing totaling over 40 million square feet with a value exceeding $7 billion. Under his leadership, Banyan Street grew into one of the largest private office investors in the Eastern United States, at one point holding roughly 15 million square feet across more than 10 cities, including landmark assets such as the 42-story Bank of America Plaza and downtown Tampa towers like Tampa City Center (38 stories) and Rivergate Tower (32 stories).

He began his real estate career in 1981 at Cushman & Wakefield, where he spent 16 years and rose to Managing Director for the Florida area before leaving in 1997. He then co-founded America's Capital Partners (ACP) in 1997–1998, leading the firm for a decade during which it invested in and operated 13.8 million square feet of office properties worth $1.9 billion across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, in joint ventures with domestic and international investors. In 2009 he combined ACP assets with Eola Capital, which subsequently merged with Parkway Properties in 2011; he served as an independent director of Parkway from 2011 to 2012. He orchestrated two major sales of his platforms to publicly traded firms, in 1997 and 2011.

A native of Miami, Touzet graduated from Ransom Everglades School (Class of 1976) and earned his bachelor's degree in International Finance and Marketing from the University of Miami. He has been an active civic and philanthropic figure: he served nine years on Ransom Everglades' board of trustees (including two years as chair), spearheaded the school's $75 million "REinventing Excellence" campaign, and in 2018 was named the school's Commencement speaker and received its Founders' Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to the Community. He is married to Lydia Touzet.

• Invests as a principal owner-operator in commercial real estate — chiefly Class A/institutional-quality office assets — rather than as a venture or angel investor in startups.
• Focuses on major Eastern-U.S. markets, with deep concentration in Florida (Miami, Tampa) and the Mid-Atlantic/Southeast.
• Deploys capital through direct acquisitions and joint-venture equity partnerships with domestic and international institutional investors.
• Targets large-scale, value-oriented office and commercial buildings; historically operated portfolios measured in millions of square feet and billions of dollars of asset value.
• Track record emphasizes building large operating platforms and realizing value through sales to publicly traded REITs (exits in 1997 and 2011).