Aeriance to move into UK regional lending

Aeriance Investments has appointed a new director of origination to expand its lending into the UK regions.

Chris Tessler will join the debt platform, which has been focused predominantly on providing development finance for high end residential properties in London. Aeriance is now aiming to originate a greater number in “strong residential markets across Greater London and major cities throughout the UK”.

Aeriance’s €500m Opportunistic Real Estate Loan Fund 2 (OREL 2) provides senior and junior short-term and development finance loans targeting 10%-12% returns. Chief executive Harin Thaker (pictured), said: “Chris brings a significant amount of resource and experience to our team as we look to focus on originating deals for residential developments across the UK. We are seeing growing momentum for house building amongst smaller developers and as liquidity begins to move out from the London housing market into the regions we are very excited about originating further business within this group of borrowers.”

The move comes at a time when the London residential market has begun to be seen by some as overheating.

Tessler joins Aeriance from BLG, where he was responsible for mezzanine lending on residential development. Prior to that, he was at Investec Bank, where he focused on asset origination and sourcing debt and equity for real estate and alternative asset classes.