Real estate investor and fund manager Cromwell Property Group has publicly revealed the reorganisation of its European operations as it seeks to be ‘more aligned’ with its investors’ strategies, and to improve efficiency in the current challenging market environment.
The reorganisation involves the creation of a regional structure comprising two European regions, which will be headed by Pontus Flemme Gärdsell for Northern Europe, and by Michael Bohde for Southern Europe, both reporting directly to Andy Creighton, Head of Investment Management, Europe. These two regions will replace the former structure, where each country had its own country head.
Flemme will be responsible for managing Cromwell’s investment and asset management activities in the Nordics, the Netherlands, the UK and CEE while Bohde will be responsible for managing Germany, France and Italy.
The company's head of Italy and head of Netherlands have left the business. Meanwhile, Justyna Filipczak continues to head CEE region, reporting to Flemme Gärdsell as head of Northern Europe.
Pertti Vanhanen, MD Europe, called it a streamlining process. ‘By streamlining our European business, we will be able to provide a greater focus on the countries our investors are showing most interest in.’
‘It will also enable us to improve operational efficiencies in the current challenging macro-economic environment, providing our clients with more integrated cross-border investment and asset management services.’
In the past 18 months, Cromwell has been active across Europe and the UK servicing longstanding mandates with clients such as CEREIT, the Singapore-listed REIT, as well as several new international mandates and marketing new strategies to investors.
Vanhanen, added: ‘Since the onset of higher interest rates, the market has changed significantly as investors and managers adjust strategies to cope with the higher cost of finance and structural changes impacting the sector. Foremost among these are how we improve the sustainability and carbon footprint of real estate assets and how we reposition buildings in sectors like offices where behaviours have changed.’
He said the company had implemented a sustainable finance framework to support a transition to more sustainable borrowing across the portfolio and is currently premarketing a value-add office repositioning strategy in the UK.
