Gatehouse Bank recruits new head of real estate finance

Gatehouse Bank has hired Trevor Homes from ICG-Longbow as its new head of real estate finance, Real Estate Capital can reveal.

From mid October he will lead the Islamic property bank’s senior lending across the UK, France, Germany, Benelux, Spain and Italy. Loans of £8m to £20m, secured against offices, retail, industrial, residential, student accommodation and budget hotels, are its sweet spot. It also provides development finance.

Homes replaces Natale Giostra, who left in April to join residential developer CNM Estates where he is responsible for capital raising. Gatehouse had poached Giostra from CBRE to spearhead its lending division, set up in November 2013 to capitalize on demand for Islamic finance. Giostra told Real Estate Capital his target was to build a loan book of £1bn.

Homes has led ICG-Longbow’s senior loan programme since 2013, focusing on small to mid market lending across the UK. Before that he worked at UniCredit.

Gatehouse was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in London. As well as providing debt it invests in real estate directly, and specializes in treasury, wealth management and Shariah advisory. It manages $2bn of assets in the US, UK and Europe.

Asset manager Threadneedle bought a 2% stake in the investment bank in March.

Financings Gatehouse has issued include a £10m loan for Apache Capital Partners’ purchase of an office building in St Helier, Jersey in November 2014; a £22.5m loan for Al Dau Development’s purchase of the Holiday Inn London West in North Acton that same month; and a £11.7m loan for Princeton Property Partners’ and Resolution Property’s development of a luxury residential-led development in Fitzrovia in June last year.

It is also co-sponsor of a $100m European mezzanine finance fund alongside a US-based investment manager.

During his 18 month stint, Giostra assembled a team of four, including Nick Westoby from Royal Bank of Scotland, Arnaud Schaller from Credit Agricole CIB and Eduardo Martin from Banco Popular Espanol. David Swann heads real estate investments.

Vice-president for real estate, Scott Nicol, left in June to start his own investment firm.