The Work of Trust: A Letter to Our Partners from Jonathan Goldstein
As we close the year, it is clear that the world is operating on a different axis to the one we have known for much of the past decade.
Technology is accelerating, global relationships are being reshaped and long-held geopolitical assumptions are being tested. Trust in leadership, in systems and in one another is increasingly contested.
Trust, according to ChatGPT, was one of the defining themes of 2025. I shared this observation with our team in London at our holiday party, noting the irony, as it was met with humoured scepticism.
To some, real estate may seem an unlikely place to talk about trust. I have always thought otherwise.
Working in this industry gives us both the privilege and the responsibility of shaping where communities take root, and where different backgrounds and beliefs are lived, expressed and respected in everyday life. Trust, in that context, is not abstract. It is built or lost through the places we create and the choices we make.
This year, the responsibility of shaping places has been central to our thinking as One Beverly Hills has progressed. As construction advances across the 17.5 acre masterplan, we have been deliberate in our choice of partners. We are grateful to be working with two of the world’s leading hotel companies, Aman and Hilton, alongside one of the world’s most respected financial institutions, JPMorgan, as anchor financier, and VICI Properties, guided by Ed Pitoniak’s instinctive understanding of experiential real estate. We have also remained closely engaged with the City of Beverly Hills, approaching the project with a shared sense of stewardship and a clear responsibility to strengthen the community over the long term.
At Cain, this sense of stewardship matters, informing how we act, decide and respond when conditions become more difficult. It is a perspective shared with our partner, Eldridge Industries, led by Todd Boehly and Tony Minella, and reflected in an alignment around a long-term view of cities and the role considered investment plays in their evolution.
Taking a long-term view demands discipline. This year, with Eldridge Industries, we sharpened that discipline across both organisations by merging our credit business with other platforms to form Eldridge Capital Management, allowing us both to focus on areas of highest conviction while positioning our businesses to seize new opportunities in a shifting environment.
In parallel, we rolled out a refreshed Cain brand and further refined our specialised investment platforms, bringing greater discipline to where we deploy capital and attention.
That clarity has allowed us to grow deliberately across Europe and the United States, while building partnerships in the Middle East and Asia with groups that share our long-term outlook. We are particularly energised by our growing relationship with Mubadala Capital as we continue to identify opportunities across distinctive real estate and brands.
I count myself deeply fortunate to work with partners who bring new perspectives and remain open to others. That openness underpins trust, grounded in the belief that progress comes from seeing the world through more than one lens and earned through clarity of purpose, alignment between strategy and execution, and the discipline to hold more than one perspective at once.
Long-term economic resilience and shared prosperity rest on open opportunity, merit and fairness applied without favour. Communities thrive when those conditions are clear and credible.
While these principles have been widely invoked by governments and institutions in recent years, the gap in opportunity persists. A defining test of leadership in 2026 will be whether trust is reinforced through delivery, rather than weakened by promises not matched by outcomes.
The ideas of trust and community that guide our work have taken a more personal weight this year, amid a visible rise in antisemitism in the UK and globally, and the deeply disturbing attacks in Manchester and at Bondi Beach. What has troubled me just as much is how quickly complexity gives way to certainty, with responsibility assigned not only to individuals but to whole communities, and a narrowing of tolerance felt most sharply by minorities.
It is against that backdrop that the hero of Bondi stands out. Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-born shopkeeper, responded not out of ideology or identity, but from a courageous sense of obligation to the people around him. His actions were a reminder that social cohesion rests on everyday choices and a shared willingness to stand up for one another.
Nelson Mandela wrote that “no one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.” Hatred, he argued, is learned. So too, is understanding.
That principle underpins how I think about progress. Not louder voices, but better ones. A willingness to engage across difference. A refusal to surrender complexity for comfort.
Trust is what enables that work, creating the conditions to shape communities and places that bring people together across social and economic lines. In that sense, I truly believe that real estate has a continuing role to play, not simply as an asset class, but as a platform for commerce, culture and community.
As partners and colleagues, I would like to thank you for the trust you place in us, and for everything we have achieved together this year. I look ahead to 2026 with genuine excitement, including the reopening of Delano Miami Beach in one of America’s great cities, and to all that the year ahead will bring.
Regards,
Jonathan Goldstein