Cushman hires GE’s Spencer-Jones for structured finance role

Cushman & Wakefield has hired the former head of debt origination at GE Capital Real Estate, James Spencer-Jones, to lead its newly launched EMEA structured finance team.

The property consultancy has established the new team within its EMEA capital markets division in order to bring together various existing finance-focussed units from within the company, including its loan sales and debt advisory teams.

Cushman & Wakefield is aiming to build out its European finance operations across its capital markets practice. One of the business areas which comes under the new structured finance team is loan portfolio transactions, which was headed by Federico Montero prior to his leaving the company in April.

The firm also acquired real estate finance personnel from its merger with DTZ last September, including head of debt advisory Edward Daubeney. Recent additions to the EMEA capital markets team include Jeff Alson from CBRE, who joined earlier this year as co-head of capital markets for Central and Eastern Europe.

At GE Capital Real Estate, Spencer-Jones led the debt origination team from its launch in 2013, overseeing the creation of a $6.5 billion balance sheet business in two and a half years. GE Capital made the decision to sell most of its real estate assets last year. Spencer-Jones previously worked at NM Rothschild and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

“Cushman & Wakefield has a formidable European and global network and I’m joining at an exciting time in its development and growth. I see enormous opportunities in this space for us to add value with the structuring and financing of real estate deals, both for our existing and potential new clients across all of our European capital markets businesses,” said Spencer-Jones.

Jan-Willem Bastijn, head of EMEA capital markets at Cushman & Wakefield, added: “James is well known and respected across both the real estate and financial markets. His expertise in structuring complex transactions on a wide variety of asset classes and across jurisdictions, along with his experience of building teams and businesses, will be invaluable to our continued growth.”