Global Student Accommodation (GSA) has appointed former ING REIM, CBRE Global Investors and Hodes Weill professional Will Rowson to lead the platform as it expands across international markets.
News of the hire comes days after the company announced the latest investment - a 302-bed property in Madrid.
GSA was started in 2007 and has stated aspirations to become the leading global student accommodation provider with over 250,000 beds under management by 2025.
The company's founder, chairman and owner is Dubai-based Nicholas Porter, a pioneer in the purpose-built student accommodation sector for over 25 years.
In a statement, GSA said Rowson has become CEO with immediate effect. Current CEO Steve Grant has stepped down to pursue a new venture with Porter, with details to be revealed in the coming weeks.
Rowson has already spent months with the senior leadership team but his official appointment has been delayed until now by the Covid-19 crisis. The company said he would drive future performance and growth.
Rowson is well-known to many in European property circles.
From 2003 to 2005 he was at ING Real Estate where he became head of European transactions. When CBRE took over ING's real estate investment management business, he became CIO EMEA of CBRE Global Investors until February 2015.
He then spent almost five years at advisory firm Hodes Weill, until leaving in December 2019.
Porter's career has been very different. He founded The Unite Group plc in the UK in 1991 and grew the company to become a FTSE-250 listed company and the largest owner of student accommodation in the UK.
With several long-time colleagues, he went on to found GSA just a year before the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, building the new venture into the leading innovator and developer globally and creating the Urbanest brand in London and Australia, which was subsequently sold in 2014.
GSA also launched in Dublin and Tokyo in 2014 and moved quickly into the UK, Dubai and China in 2015 and into Australia and Germany in 2016 and subsequently other markets such as Spain.
Over this timeframe, the sector has grown from its infancy to an asset class attracting tens of billions of dollars of investment from institutional capital sources.
