Lloyds unveils new commercial real estate team structure

Lloyds has restructured its commercial real estate lending business into six specialist teams.

Headed by managing director and global head of commercial real estate John Feeney (pictured), the news follows the merger of its former global corporates (loans above £50m) and mid-markets real estate businesses (loans of £10m – £50m) last September.

The banks has become increasingly active in the commercial real estate lending space over the past year having shifted the vast majority of its legacy, problem real estate loanbook.

The new teams are: listed clients, institutional clients, major private groups, developers, international clients and private real estate corporates.

The new operating model will be fully implemented from April 2015. Lloyds’ SME real estate business (loans below £10m) will continue to operate as a separate team.

The listed clients team is headed by Richard Heath who was formerly head of relationship management. The team will support the bank’s relationships with publicly listed property companies.

Its institutional client team will be led by Madeleine McDougall who joined the bank last November from Deutsche Pfandbriefbank. The team will work with financial sponsors, investment managers, sovereign wealth funds, insurers and other money managers active in real estate.

The major private groups team will be headed by Gabrielle Berring, the former head of the mid-markets team for London and the South East. The team will typically deal with high net worth individuals, families and partnerships with access to large volumes of capital.

Graeme Alfillle-Cook will head the developers team which will be dedicated to supporting large scale development across the UK. Alfillle-Cook was previously a relationship director within the global corporates business.

The private real estate corporates team will be led by Marty Green, who had previously led the mid-markets commercial real estate team. Green will oversee relationships with a broad array of real estate businesses and entrepreneurs in London and the UK regions.

Pierre Gervasi will remain the head of the international team in Lloyds’ Paris office.

Feeney said: “Our new structure is the result of a long-term strategic plan to align our business model to our clients’ needs and to the changing dynamics of the commercial real estate finance market.

“We have moved to a model centred on six individual specialist teams that we are aiming to establish as centres of excellence. This will allow us to deepen and enhance our interactions with defined market categories.

“The leadership team supporting me are ideally placed to help deliver the next phase of our growth. A key part of this will be continuing to focus on delivering innovative and tailored solutions to clients that can blend balance sheet lending with access to a suite of sophisticated debt products and other financial services from across the group.”