EY UK head of real estate quits to join former Goldman duo

Dean Hodcroft, EY’s UK and Ireland head of real estate and construction, has quit the firm after nearly 20 years to link up with former Goldman Sachs duo Ed Siskind and Ramón Camina-Mendizabal, Real Estate Capital can reveal.

The new firm, Cale Street Partners, is to be backed with $1.5bn of cornerstone capital from the Kuwaiti Investment Authority. Cale Street will provide senior and mezzanine debt in Europe as well as equity capital in partnership with third parties; it appears to have the financial and staffing capabilities to become a major new player in the real estate lending market.

The $548bn Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund is the latest new investor into the sector with the likes of Singapore’s GIC already having made some selective investments into the area. It has been a major direct investor into European real estate in recent years, having completed the equal largest UK deal of 2013, its £1.7bn purchase of More London estate on the South Bank from the Armenian Izmirlian family.

Hodcroft is one of the best known names in European real estate consulting. A partner at EY since 2001, he has been an advisor to Goldman Sachs in the past,  as well as the likes of Apollo Global Management, GE Real Estate and Network Rail.

Cale Street has also appointed Wilson Lee as a director. Lee is a co-founder of real estate debt advisory firm First Growth and was previously managing director of ING’s Global Opportunity Fund. Before that he set up and headed UBS Investment Bank’s Real Estate Principal Finance group in Europe and Asia Pacific and was European head of Lehman Brothers’ Global Real Estate Group.

Last month Real Estate Capital revealed that Camina-Mendizabal, Goldman’s head of real estate finance, EMEA had quit to join up with Siskind, the bank’s former head of its Real Estate Principal Investment Area division. Prior to leaving the bank in 2011 Siskind had responsibility for $34bn of assets. The pair spent a combined 38 years at Goldman.

EY declined to comment.