TIAA Henderson Real Estate has hired two debt origination specialists ahead of the anticipated launch of its first real estate debt fund in Europe.
Shawn Kaufman has joined the company and Christoph Wagner will arrive next month. Both will have the title of director of debt strategies – origination and structuring.
They will report to Christian Janssen, who joined TIAA Henderson from Renshaw Bay last year, and who is now looking after TIAA Henderson European debt operations.
TIAA Henderson said it would begin marketing a debt platform for third-party investors “towards the end of the summer”.
The fund manager, which was launched earlier this year through a joint venture between Henderson Global Investors and TIAA-CREF, is already in a position to invest capital on behalf of TIAA-CREF through a separate account.
Earlier in the year, Tom Garbutt, head of global real estate at TIAA-CREF, told IP Real Estate that the organisation was working on the launch of UK debt fund.
Kaufman, the former head of syndicated real estate and agency at RBS, was previously a partner at Stonebridge Private Capital.
Wagner, who joins on July 25, has been a director in the real estate debt team at BlackRock since 2012. Previously, he held positions at Barclays Capital, Morgan Stanley and McKinsey & Company.
