Cushman hires Ramchandani for finance role

Cushman & Wakefield has hired real estate capital markets specialist Ritesh Ramchandani to join the debt and structured finance business which it established last year, Real Estate Capital has learned.

Ramchandani, who joins as a partner and will be based in London, joins from real estate private equity firm Landmark Partners. Prior to that, Ramchandani held banking and structured finance roles at Standard Chartered Bank and GE Capital.

At Cushman, Ramchandani will focus on sourcing, structuring and securing financing of real estate transactions for clients of the European structured finance business, which sits within its capital markets practice.

The team is led by James Spencer-Jones, head of debt and structured finance EMEA, who joined Cushman to launch the team last June, having previously been head of debt origination at GE Capital Real Estate.

Prior to the launch of the unit, Cushmans’ property debt focus was on advising sellers of non-performing loan portfolios, although following the departure of loan sales specialist Federico Montero to Evercore last summer, it made the decision to bolster its real estate debt advisory business.

Last year, capital markets specialists Doug Harmon, Adam Spies and Kevin Donner joined from Eastdil Secured.

“Ritesh has a breadth of experience and expertise in structuring complex transactions on a wide variety of asset classes and across jurisdictions, which will be instrumental to our continued growth of the business and to delivering real value for our clients,” commented Spencer-Jones.

“I’m delighted to have joined Cushman & Wakefield’s EMEA debt and structured finance team at such a time. It’s a fast-growing business within an established, highly-regarded and dominant player in the global real estate industry,” Ramchandani said.