Private equity group BC Partners has hired Stéphane Theuriau to lead the firm’s newly launched real estate business.

The former CEO of French real estate investment company Altarea Cogedim, has been appointed managing partner in London to build and lead BC Partners Real Estate.

At BC Partners, Theuriau will establish a new team that will pursue a pan-European opportunistic investment strategy covering all real estate sectors, making direct and indirect private equity real estate investments as well as controlling and minority investments.

The new real estate platform will complement both BC Partners’ private equity buyout business, which closed its €7bn flagship fund BC European Capital X earlier this year, and its opportunistic credit platform, BC Partners Credit, which was launched in February 2017, the firm said.

Established in 1986, BC Partners manages over €17bn of assets in private equity and private credit. Since inception, BC Partners has completed 101 private equity investments in companies with a total enterprise value of €124bn.

Raymond Svider, a managing partner at BC Partners, said: “The launch of BC Partners Real Estate is an important step in the evolution of the firm, and we are delighted to welcome Stephane into the BC Partners family.

“Stephane is a seasoned real estate investor, with a 25-year successful track record across Europe. Stephane is also an ideal cultural fit for us, and his experience will further enrich and complement our private equity DNA, and enable us to offer our LPs another investment option in an attractive asset class.”

Theuriau said, “there is a unique opportunity to leverage the firm’s proven infrastructure, network and investment excellence to develop a new leading real estate strategy.

“There is strong demand in the market for a synergistic, private equity approach to real estate investing and I look forward to working closely with the team to help us capitalise on this opportunity.”

Theuriau joined Altarea in 2009. Prior to that, he launched Morgan Stanley’s real estate investing business in France in 1998, before becoming its head of Europe from 2003 until 2006.