Garbe Industrial Real Estate, Cromwell Property Group, Octane Capital, Granite, ATP Real Estate, DEAS Asset Management, Gorrissen Federspiel, Cushman & Wakefield, Avison Young, Union Investment, Munich Hotel Partners, Hyatt Group

Cromwell Property GroupMatthew Bird has been appointed to lead the real estate manager’s UK business. Bird was most recently director and head of commercial at Octane Capital. Prior to this, he held senior roles at Legal & General Real Assets and Frogmore. As head of UK, Bird will spearhead Cromwell’s UK activities as the company continues to implement its strategy and build scale across its €3.7bn European platform. Bird is a board member of the Investment Property Forum, and chair of the IPF Next Generation Group.

ATP Real Estate – The property investment arm of Denmark’s largest pension fund, ATP, has appointed Martine Prince as chief legal officer and Kent Traulsen as project development director. Prince will join ATP Real Estate from her current position at the Copenhagen law firm Gorrissen Federspiel. She has also previously worked as a business lawyer at A P Møller-Mærsk. Traulsen is joining ATP Real Estate from his current job as head of development at DEAS Asset Management. Traulsen’s previous jobs include that of technical director for the real estate arm of Nordic bank Nordea, and investment and housing project development manager at Danish property developer Sjælsø Gruppen. Both Prince and Traulsen will join ATP Real Estate – which is undergoing several changes under its new chief executive Martin Vang Hansen – after the summer.

Union InvestmentThorsten Purkus has joined the real estate management firm to lead the international asset management hospitality team. Purkus held a variety of roles in the Hyatt Group between 2002 and 2016. He was then in charge of asset management at Munich Hotel Partners and served as managing partner at PVP Hospitality in Zurich. At Union Investment, he is responsible for managing 31 hotels across seven European countries (excluding Germany) and the US.

Cushman & Wakefield – A capital markets team, led by executive directors Charles Moore and Marlene Fujita Winkel, has joined the firm’s Las Vegas office. The team, which also includes, Hunter Bradshaw an associate and brokerage coordinator Bart DeBuono, joins from CBRE. With more than 50 years of collective experience, this group has represented many of the industry’s top institutions and owners in Nevada, facilitating major commercial investment sales for both individual assets as well as portfolios. 

Avison Young – The commercial real estate services firm has strengthened its £15bn UK property management business with the appointment of seven staff from Cushman & Wakefield. Barry Young and Dean Maszlin, who both join in September as directors, respectively specialising in asset management and mobilisation of new builds. Kevin Duff, Amy Rance, Justine Edmonds, Alison Gardner and Helen Haley all join as associates and a senior surveyor, specialising in building set up and the management of trophy assets. The Avison Young UK property management team currently manages a wide variety of property including office, industrial and logistics and retail, as well as mixed-use schemes.

Garbe Industrial Real EstateStefan Wierzbinski has been named head of investment management. He is responsible for the structuring of new investment products at the national and pan-European level. Before the move, he spent a number of years as executive vice president Europe and managing director at Granite, a REIT listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.