CAIA London Educational Event

Experience & Qualifications
Between 2005 and 2009 John was managing director and global head of real estate fund of funds at BlackRock Alternative Advisors. Before that he was director of real estate investment banking at Credit Suisse First Boston (Europe) Ltd.  John’s career includes positions as a Pan-European real estate equities analyst and director at Credit Suisse First Boston and ABN Amro, director responsible for investment strategy at Savills Fund Management, associate director within DTZ Debenham Thorpe’s investment strategy unit, associate partner and head of research at KFR Research and at Merton Associates as research executive and property analyst. John started his career at McKinsey & Co as a research assistant. John is a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, has a degree in Economics and Geography from Lancaster University and did his investment exams at City University Business School.  John is currently Chairman of the Investment Property Forum.

 

Jeremy Robson is a highly experienced structure financed banker and real estate investor. He qualified as a chartered surveyor with Hillier Parker in 1992 after graduating with a First Class Honours Degree in estate management in 1990, since when he has spent most of his career in real estate investment banking.

Jeremy established RAM in June 2007 to act as an originator, investor and manager of investments.
RAM has the backing of several major global investors with whom Jeremy has worked very closely for many years.

Prior to June 2007, Jeremy had been a senior Managing Director and Head of Principal Finance in RBS’ Real Estate Finance business. Operating with a wide mandate extending to both equity and debt, Jeremy specialised whilst at RBS in offering bespoke funding solutions to major real estate owners. Typically he undertook very large scale, complex transactions, blending expertise in real estate investment, corporate finance, capital markets and taxation. He joined RBS from DTZ, where he had headed the finance division.

Whilst at RBS, in addition to heading REF, Principal Finance Division, Jeremy was a senior member of REF’s executive board, director of numerous RBS investment focussed subsidiary companies and an active participant on RBS Credit Committees.

Jeremy joined RBS in October 2001 as a director after the bank took over National Westminster Bank plc. He established a principal finance business and built this into a market leading investor over the next eight years. Within six weeks of joining Jeremy wrote his first deal - a pioneering £312m sale and leaseback with Hilton Group - and banked a £37m profit immediately. Jeremy’s deal making did not cease and the business grew exponentially. In his last year at RBS, Jeremy delivered a £330m net income return for the bank.

Jeremy is active in all major industry sectors throughout the EU and Nordic region. He has particular expertise in hotels, having acquired more than €6.0Bn of assets since 2001. In 2001, Jeremy led two ground breaking sale and leasebacks in the hotel sector, namely a €448m regional based portfolio with Hilton Group plc, and a €1.68Bn sale & leaseback forming an integral part of the capital structure behind the purchase of the Le Meridien chain by Normura PFG. Just before Christmas 2005, Jeremy led a further large scale transaction with Hilton Group plc, arranged along the lines of a sale & management contract back. This €560m deal involved 16 UK assets and was devised and underwritten by RBS REF acting as principal investor and financier. In early 2006 Jeremy purchased 47 hotels from Marriott/Whitbread in an innovative sale and management contract transaction which had a total capital commitment in excess of €1.8Bn.

Other notable transactions undertaken by Jeremy include the underwriting of a €924m sale & leaseback relative to the acquisition by Cinven of NCP, the co-underwriting of the €2.1Bn funding package provided to a consortium of investors who acquired Somerfield plc and took that company private and a £400m sale and leaseback to Volkswagen in respect of 95 car dealerships.
Jeremy is the proud father of two children. He is a keen sportsman with interests in triathlon, skiing, and dinghy sailing. He is also a regular speaker at hotel and real estate banking conferences.

 

Nick has 13 years experience in the real estate and finance sectors both in Australia and the UK and is a Director at CBRE.  Nick sits within the Investment Advisory team, where he provides investment and asset management advice to property investment vehicles both on a retained and transactional basis. His primary expertise is with leveraged and complex investment structures, advising capital under management in structuring new investments with operating partners, overseeing asset managers to implement the strategies of these investment structures or in unwinding vehicles which may or may not be in financial distress.  Drawing on his past experience also in raising capital and structuring vehicles, Nick works with other parts of the Real Estate Finance division and CBRE Ltd generally on real estate deals where there is an element of corporate and structured finance advice required.

Nick joined CBRE Real Estate Finance in Q3 2010.  In the Investment Advisory team,  Nick’s primary retained mandates are leading the team that acts as Property Advisor to the Glanmore Property Fund and co-lead advisor to the Coral Student Accommodation Fund. The Glanmore mandate was won in early 2012 after taking over the Cardales business that previously had the mandate. The mandate requires him to lead the asset management team and strategy as well as give ongoing corporate finance advice to the fund manager, Tilney Asset Management International Ltd (TAMIL, a Deutsche Bank owned entity), relating to the refinancing of the Fund completed in the second half of 2012. Coral Student Portfolio (c. £140 million equity) is a fund that invests in the student sector via partnerships with student housing specialist operators and developers via a combination of debt and/or equity. Nick’s primary responsibility is in structuring and managing these partnership investments.  Nick also set up the North West Evergreen Fund, which is a fund backed by the European Investment Bank and invests via senior and mezzanine debt into regeneration projects in the Greater Manchester and North West County areas.  

Nick also works on real estate corporate finance advisory mandates in the real estate division, with a particular focus on restructuring and recapitalising real estate holding vehicles. He worked on the sale of the Chiswick Park Unit Trust on behalf of Schroders to Blackstone in 2010 and consistently works on sales of secondary positions held in structured vehicles in Europe.

Nick joined CBRE Real Estate Finance from his own company, Ingman-Jones LLP, which was a boutique real estate corporate finance and investment advisory business borne out of a management buyout of Strutt and Parker Real Estate Financial Services.  As an investment advisor at these companies he ran the Coral Student Accommodation Fund (now transferred to CBRE which he co-manages), managed segregated accounts for small pension funds and livery companies and helped manage a joint venture private public partnership deal with a UK local authority.  He also advised on a number of corporate finance transactions across several sectors, including the structuring of a joint venture between Rockspring and Mansion Group investing in an Edinburgh student housing asset and also the partial stake sale of the Lloyd’s of London Building on behalf of a US private equity group.

Prior to arriving in the UK in 2007, Nick was a director of a private company called Maraza Holdings which began as a real estate consultancy specialising in asset sales and leasing and asset management and traded as LJ Hooker Commercial South Sydney.  Nick helped sell this business and founded another Maraza business trading as Sydney Property Specialist Services, which specialised in asset management of distressed portfolios on behalf of banks, such as Challenger Bank and National Australia Bank, and chartered accounting firms such as Grant Thornton and Sims Partners.

Prior to these years in the real estate finance sector, Nick worked in the finance industry for Macquarie Bank, where he trained as a commodities trader, and also spent some time in equities at Perpetual Investments.