J.W. Kaempfer is Chairman of London-based McArthurGlen, a company he and his partners from The Kaempfer Company founded in 1993 jointly with BAA Plc, the world's foremost owner and operator of major airports.
Today McArthurGlen UK, Ltd. is Europe's largest developer, owner and manager of designer outlet shopping villages. With the opening of Barberino, North of Firenze, the company now has sixteen (16) villages across Europe, all purpose built, with a number of others under construction, or in final planning. The firm operates in England, Scotland, Wales, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy and Germany.
Mr. Kaempfer was formerly Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Washington, DC based Kaempfer Company, which he founded in 1977. This firm is a diversified real estate development, management and construction firm specializing in first class office buildings. In 2002 Mr. Kaempfer merged the Kaempfer Company with the New York-based Vornado Realty Trust, one of America's largest property owning companies specializing in quality office buildings, trade marts and other large real-estate ventures.
In his retail and office projects across the world, Mr. Kaempfer and his partners have become known for creating developments that are, in the case of new buildings, of the finest quality and design and genuinely sensitive to their existing built environment; and in the case of the extensive portfolio of historic buildings, some of the finest, most highly acclaimed renovations and reconstructions.
Over the last 25 years Mr. Kaempfer's firms have worked with many of the world's most highly regarded modern architects including: I.M. Pei, Harry Cobb, James Ingo Freed, Cesar Pelli, David Childs of S.O.M., Helmut Jahn, Don Hisaka, Lord Richard Rogers and many exceptional historic architects and architectural historians on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr. Kaempfer received his MBA degree from Harvard University and has served on a number of non-profit boards and charitable organizations, including The National Board of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), and the Board of Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center. He is currently a trustee of the American School in London and Deputy Chairman of the Board of The Prince's Regeneration Trust. He has occasionally been a guest lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Yale School of Management and Princeton University (Architecture Program).