Former RBS banker joins CBRE debt advisory

CBRE Capital Advisors has appointed banker Victoria Hill to expand the firm’s regional UK debt advisory business.

Hill, a regional director who joined from RBS, is based in Manchester and is the first of CBRE Capital Advisors’ debt and structured finance team to work from outside the firm’s UK London headquarters.

“I am still amazed at how many lenders are out there and most of them say they have the appetite to lend in the regions rather than London only”, she said.

“But there is a difference between stated appetite and reality, that is those who understand that what they will be looking at most of the time outside London prime is good secondary stock.”

Hill said some of the newer, debt fund lenders “are real opportunities for CBRE’s clients. They have small teams and if they can understand the location and be talked through it by someone they trust in the market, then they are there to lend.

“They are willing to learn rather than just wanting to lend on the top three buildings in the top three regional cities.”

Hill’s role is advising clients nationally who have real estate finance requirements, working with CBRE’s UK capital markets teams. She said she was working on a £250 million pipeline of financings.

Hill has experience in senior and mezzanine origination and structuring, and in equity investing. Early in her career she was an investment agent at Savills, then spent 10 years at RBS where she worked on European real estate joint ventures in which RBS was a co-investor before moving to RBS Manchester in 2007 to take responsibility for core corporate clients.

Latterly she was the senior director in the north west regional real estate finance team at the bank.

CBRE Capital Advisors’ debt and structured finance team is headed by Steve Williamson. Last year it appointed Marco Rampin to build up work in continental Europe. Other recent new hires include Lisa Attenborough who recently joined from Barclays, to specialise in financing alternative assets classes.