LaSalle Investment Management is to establish a special situations team for the UK and continental Europe that will primarily be responsible for evaluating potential corporate level acquis
LaSalle Investment Management is to establish a special situations team for the UK and continental Europe that will primarily be responsible for evaluating potential corporate level acquisitions, structured debt and equity opportunities, and will target the higher risk-return end of the investment spectrum.
LaSalle says the creation of the team reflects its commitment to pursuing its long-term strategic vision in all market cycles and increases its capabilities to make attractive investments in more complex situations, such as large-scale joint ventures, private real estate operating companies, corporate sale/leasebacks, structured debt and equity interests, distressed debt and public company buyouts.
The team is headed by new recruit Amy Aznar, who has a 13-year track record analysing and executing corporate deals for leading financial institutions. Aznar, who will be based in LaSalle’s London office, which head strategic entity-level investing, large transactions and joint ventures in the UK and Europe.
She and her team will report to Simon Marrison and Charles Maudsley, co-heads of LaSalle Investment Management Europe, and will work closely with the firm’s existing teams, drawing on on-the-ground local property expertise, fundraising, business development and fund structuring.
‘Our aim in establishing this new enterprise across Europe is a strategic move to capitalise on many of the immediate and long-term opportunities we see in the corporate real estate market,’ say Marrison and Maudsley.
‘This not only underscores our enthusiasm for expanding our entrepreneurial team base into newer and more innovative areas of investment to realise returns for our investors, but further emphasises our continued confidence in LaSalle’s position to take advantage of current market conditions.
‘Recent volatility offers investors in Europe an opportunity to maximise returns, and we believe the overall outlook for the region remains positive, with Europe being home to some of the world’s largest, most active property markets offering strong investment prospects.’
Aznar has a varied background in corporate-level principal investment and advisory in various regions, most recently as a managing director with Merrill Lynch Global Principal Investments in London where she was responsible for executing transactions including entity-level and platform joint venture investing as well as non-performing loan acquisitions.
She previously worked with Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Finance raising equity capital for corporations, structuring and executing corporate realisations and joint ventures and providing financial strategic advisory. Earlier she was involved in debt and equity capital-raising and the financing and disposition of assets with LaSalle Partners in Chicago, having worked in the real estate group at Morgan Stanley and for Morgan Stanley Real Estate Funds in New York.
‘Amy’s sophisticated understanding of investment banking, fund structuring and financial strategic advisory matched our interests in establishing and growing this area of real estate investment,’ Marrison and Maudsley say.
‘Combined with our long-held abilities to source and finance deals across Europe, Amy is well positioned to harness the many entity-level investment opportunities available across this still-rich region.’
LaSalle Investment Management, part of the Jones Lang LaSalle group, is a global real estate investment manager with some USD54bn in assets across a range of real estate capital and operating markets including private and public, debt and equity.
