LOS ANGELES, Oct. 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AssetBuilt, a global business advisory firm executing high-value industrial, real estate and corporate transactions, today set out the operating philosophy of founder and chief executive officer Tara Shaikh, as the firm moves through one of the largest runs of industrial engagements in its history.
Shaikh began her career in industrial auctions at BidItUp Auctions Worldwide, joining as a receptionist and rising through the business. She led the company’s shift from a largely analog operation to online selling and automated process, and spent years on plant floors walking facilities, cataloguing equipment and running live auction sales, later managing auctions internationally for clients across the United States and Europe.
She served as chief operating officer of Maynards Industries from 2020 to 2023 and as its chief executive officer from 2023 to 2024. She then returned to BidItUp Auctions Worldwide as chief executive officer from 2024 to 2026, before founding AssetBuilt.
Her central argument is that industrial asset disposition has been run as an extraction business and should be run as a service one.
“We are not trying to come into a facility and pick it apart and take what we can. We’re trying to revitalize the assets and put them in other places and provide the service to our clients.”
Shaikh is pointed about the language the industry uses for a plant closure.
“A disposition is not a deal for us to benefit off of. It is a project for us to help our clients with — help them through, help this asset move to this part of the state, this part of the country, this part of the world to be used in a different way.”
That position extends to how AssetBuilt handles valuation. The firm publishes AssetBuilt Intelligence™, a free asset valuation tool available to clients, prospective clients and the wider market — a deliberate decision to put pricing information in clients’ hands rather than hold it.
“If you’re working on a project together and you’re in charge of the toolbox, you have to have the best tools available. If our clients can use that, they’re going to know we’re not hiding anything.”
Shaikh expects that transparency to reshape the sector, arguing that margins built on an information gap will not survive clients being able to research asset values themselves.
Recent AssetBuilt engagements led under Shaikh include:
- The former Anheuser-Busch brewery campus in Newark, New Jersey — a 3.2 million square foot industrial asset recovery
- Cutrale’s citrus processing and beverage facility in Leesburg, Florida
- The former Aspen Aerogels advanced manufacturing facility in Register, Georgia
- Surplus to the ongoing operations of Rivian in Hayward, California
On the leadership lesson she returns to most often, Shaikh credits the mentor who trained her:
“Everybody who thinks they’re working for you — you’re actually working for them. That is so accurate. It’s the golden rule of business.”
About AssetBuilt
AssetBuilt is a global business advisory firm executing high-value industrial, real estate and corporate transactions. The firm specializes in industrial auctions, private treaty sales, strategic asset recovery, decommissioning, turnkey plant liquidations and manufacturing facility transitions, helping manufacturers, financial institutions, private equity firms and industrial operators maximize asset value. AssetBuilt reaches buyers in more than 140 countries across food and beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical processing, industrial manufacturing, logistics, packaging, recycling and consumer products.
Learn more at assetbuilt.com.
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