CBRE sets up EMEA hotels corporate finance team

CBRE continues to expand its corporate finance service, making a key hire to advise clients in the European hotels real estate sector.

The business has recruited former KPMG and Grant Thornton partner Ian Corfield who will work with CBRE’s Philip Cropper in a new venture offering advice on equity and debt funding, M&A and restructuring in the hotel real estate industry.

In line with other recent appointments, the pair will work with both the CBRE Capital Advisors business, which includes corporate finance and debt placement, and CBRE’s sector specialists, in this case CBRE Hotels, which is headed by Derek Gammage and Keith Lindsay.

Capital Advisors’ managing director Richard Dakin, who joined the firm in November 2014, has been building up CBRE’s EMEA corporate finance business and ensuring the group’s sector specialist teams and Capital Advisors work closely together.

At the end of 2015, Lisa Attenborough joined the London office from Barclays in a director role working with both the Capital Advisors debt & structured finance business run by Steve Williamson and CBRE’s specialist markets business headed by David Batchelor.

Attenborough specialises in financing healthcare, leisure and student housing accommodation.

One of Dakin’s first hires was Tim Ryan from JP Morgan as head of strategic advisory, corporate finance.

Corfield joins as head of EMEA hotels corporate finance while Cropper’s new role is vice chairman of EMEA hotels, focusing on strategic advisory work for European institutional clients.

Cropper said the hotel sector had “grown exponentially” over the last few years, and “what was previously seen as an alternative real estate asset has become far more mainstream.  As a result there are now a swathe of both new investors and lenders taking an active interest in the sector.

“We know our clients are increasingly looking for advice at a strategic level that can help not only build on their hotel portfolios across the region, but also derive enhanced value out of them.”