Property Movers & Shakers May 2022
27 May 2022
PrimeResi brings LonRes the monthly headlines on key property recruitment and business moves from May 2022.
Savills-owned buying agency Prime Purchase has recruited a new director to cover the South West patch. Fred Cook has made the move to the buying side from Savills’ country house department. He joined Savills in 2019 after a five-year stint at Strutt & Parker, having originally started out in farming. Property Vision has added two new faces to its London team, recruiting Georgie Bolton and Tom Nicole to advise clients on property acquisitions in the capital. Bolton moves from interior design house Taylor Howes, where she was Business Development Director, to cover the South West London patch for PV, with focus on family homes. Nicole has spent the last three years at Knight Frank covering London and Surrey, having joined the firm from school. He’s now handling Prime Central London property searches at PV. Knight Frank’s independent buying agency arm, The Buying Solution, has refreshed its look, following two record years and an expansion of both team and coverage. A gold “open door” logo replaces the old purple colours, and is meant to represent the 18-strong firm’s off-market prowess. The Country team now has six partners, led by Jonathan Bramwell. Will Watson helms the London team. Jo Eccles’ Eccord has expanded its property management team, hiring Jennie Elliott as senior property manager. Elliott has spent the last ten years at Savills, latterly as associate director in the prime and super-prime team, and previously held senior property management roles at both Knight Frank and John D Wood. Heaton & Partners has recruited a new team member to lead a roll-out of its property management offering. Tom Hayes has joined Ed Heaton’s agency from Strutt & Parker, where he was managing private clients’ estates in the southeast of England; he was previously the rural property manager for a large private estate in Hampshire, and also spent some years farming. Sami Robertson’s boutique London property consultancy Harwood Advisory has hired Anna Lazenbury as senior property advisor. Lazenbury previously set up the property division for international family office Stonehage Fleming, to cover all UHNW real estate requirements. Hamptons has acquired London-based international new-build estate agency Venres, creating a new International Residential Department to focus on overseas development sales. Venres was set up in 2020 by former Knight Franker Matt Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy previously spent eight years with KF, stepping up to become Partner in 2019. Before that, he did a spell as a sales agent with Hamptons. Foxtons has acquired two more London estate agencies. Gordon & Co in South London and Stones Residential in North London have been bought for a total consideration of £10.55mn. Ed Woolgar has moved from Strutt & Parker to Cluttons, joining as Lettings Partner in the firm’s Hyde Park Office. Woolgar has worked in Prime Central London estate agency for the last 15 years, most recently as Lettings Director at Strutt & Parker’s South Kensington branch for three years. Before that, he was Head of Lettings at Harrods Estate, and head of corporate and short lets at Chestertons (where he also did a spell as Chelsea sales manager). He started his property career at Foxtons in 2004. Savills has opened a new residential sales and lettings office in Teddington, its tenth in south west London. Rory Wallace (“Head of Cluster” for SW London lettings, based in Richmond) and Robin Chatwin (Head of SW London, based in Wandsworth) are running the show. Savills has also installed a new office head at its longstanding base in Sunningdale. Charles Broadbent-Combe, a director in the Cobham sales team, is stepping up after nearly ten years with the agency. Specialist new-build agency Johns & Co has recruited Jordan Rhodes from Dexters’ sales team to head up its new homes division. Two-year-old top-end estate agency The Country House Department has added a senior Knight Franker to its team, recruiting Nick Loweth as Regional Director. Loweth has spent the last 16 years working at Knight Frank in Hungerford, and four years with Strutt & Parker in Newbury before that, selling prime country houses across Berkshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire and South Oxfordshire. Boutique London agency Finlay Brewer has appointed a new Head of Sales. Debbie McFadyen has stepped up after seven years at the firm, and will now lead the sales division covering the prime west London “villages” of Brook Green, Askew and Brackenbury. Former Fine & Country partner Damion Merry has launched an American-style estate agency in Oxfordshire, promising to “create the number one luxury real estate company in the UK”, called Luxury Property Partners. Boutique agency House Collective has recruited Jerome Walker from Hampstead-based TK International, where he spent over six years as lettings director. He was previously lettings manager at Chancellors in St John’s Wood. Property broker network Leading Real Estate Companies of the World has recruited a new director of Global Business Development. Cyprus-based Tasos Stavrou is taking on responsibility for expanding LeadingRE’s international business from the company’s London office. He has also been put in charge of the “Destinations by LeadingRE” marketing programme for new developments. BNP Paribas Real Estate – which owns Strutt & Parker – has recruited a new Head of Residential Capital Markets. Build-to-rent expert Andrew Screen moves from Cortland, where he headed up investment in Europe for almost four years – playing a key role in the firm’s £4bn UK BtR roll-out. Before that, he worked at ReSI Capital Management, CBRE and GVA. Estate agency and investment firm Orlando Reid has independent Clapham sales and lettings agency Sheraton Law, as its ambitious expansion drive continues. The Sheraton Law name and large office will be retained as part of the deal, with former owner Lauren Van Veen staying on in a consultant role. The UK master franchise for international estate agency brand Century 21 has been sold by SDL Group to Nicholas Faulkner, the owner of leasehold property management business Alexander Faulkner Partnership Ltd. Luxury property design/development firm 1.61 London has teamed up with property developer Urbanwise and investment company Valpre Capital to create a new Joint Venture, with ambitions to bring forward “multiple projects” across Central London. A debut acquisition sets the tone, promising a £40mn GDV prime resi development between Claridge’s and Grosvenor Square in the heart of Mayfair. 1.61 London was set up in 2010 by Eton-educated brothers, Alexander and Michael Christou. Hospitality big-hitter Andrew Broniszewski has been appointed as Director of Residences at the Hinduja Group’s Raffles-operated development in Whitehall, The OWO. Two of central London’s great estates – Shaftesbury Plc and Capital & Counties Plc – are in “advanced discussions” about an all-share merger that could create a c.£3.5bn property behemoth owning some c.2.9 million square feet of the West End. Shaftesbury’s Chairman Jonathan Nicholls would lead the combined business as Chair, with Capco boss Ian Hawksworth as CEO. Capco’s finance chief Situl Jobanputra would be CFO, and Shaftesbury’s current CFO Chris Ward would be COO. Shaftesbury Non-Exec Richard Akers would be the Senior Independent Director. Peter Brooks-Johnson, CEO of Rightmove, Britain’s biggest property, has decided to leave the company after 16 years. He will stay at the helm until the Plc’s next full-year results are announced in February 2023. A “comprehensive process to identify Peter’s successor” starts imminently, with his involvement. Estate agency comparison website GetAgent has recruited two senior players to its team: John De Pree joins as the proptech firm’s first Chief Marketing Officer, and property industry veteran Mal McCallion is on board as Chief Operating Officer. Proptech firm nurtur.group (which changed its name from Epropservices earlier this year) has named a new Chief Technology Officer, Damon Bullimore. Multinational law firm Pinsent Masons has named Claire Hughes as the head of its global real estate division, taking over from James Crookes who will continue to lead the firm’s Property practice group. Hughes – a dual-qualified chartered surveyor and solicitor – joined The Firm in 2007. She has been head of client relationships for the real estate sector and head of the London Property Practice for over eight years. Widely-used anti-money laundering firm SmartSearch has named a new Chief Operating Officer, appointing Collette Allen to the senior role. Allen has been with the company since 2013, rising from Senior Support Specialist to Head of Client Services, and now COO. At 30 years old, she was the firm’s youngest-ever Board member. Law firm Kingsley Napley has added a new partner to its real estate and construction practice. Simon Robinson has joined from Armstrong Teasdale, which acquired Kerman & Co in 2021, where he had worked for 17 years. Walter Lilly is expanding is roster of services with a new super-prime residence management arm. The venerable construction and maintenance firm has recruited Georgina Peech (née Rabl) as business development manager to help roll out the offering across the luxury property sector. Peech was previously head of business development at Bold & Reeves, a PCL-based property management firm specialising in UHNW resi assets. Placemaking consultancy MurrayTwohig has added another Battersea Power Station heavyweight to its senior team, recruiting Honor Fishburn as UK & European Director. Fishburn spent the last seven years handling placemaking at Battersea Power Station. Commercial real estate giant Colliers has taken a big stake in Paragon, one of Britain’s biggest independent building consultancies, for an undisclosed amount. The addition of Paragon’s 150-strong business to Colliers creates a combined team of 213, pitched as a “market-leading project & building consultancy offering”. Paragon’s co-Managing Directors John Munday and Robert Perry become co-Heads of Project & Building Consultancy at Colliers, retaining equity in the business. The Home Builders Federation has recruited a new Planning Director, bringing in Sam Stafford to replace Andrew Whitaker, who has retired after 28 years in the role. Stafford moves from Barratt, where he’s been Regional Strategic Land Director since 2014. Knight Frank has boosted its project & building consultancy team, hiring Holly Harris to lead on party wall & neighbourly matters. The City of London Corporation has elected a new planning chief to take over from Alastair Moss. As Planning and Transportation Committee Chairman, Shravan Joshi will now lead on all planning issues affecting the Square Mile, including leading the discussion and debate on permissions for new developments.BUYING AGENTS
ESTATE AGENTS
DEVELOPERS
TECH & LEGAL
CONSTRUCTION & PLANNING
Visit primeresi.com
Sign up to the Lonres newsletter