Knight Frank to open new office in Italy

As the Italian market comes back into favour among foreign investors, agent Knight Frank has decided to open an office in Milan headed by CEO Alessandro Riboni.

Knight Frank has been active in Italy over the past 20 years through a partnership with the real estate arm of Pirelli, currently known as Prelios. However, the property adviser has said it is now willing to take its Italian activities a step forward.

‘With Italy very much on foreign investors radars, and increasingly positive economic news from the Eurozone we felt this was the right time to enter the Italian market more formally,' commented Chris Bell, managing director of Knight Frank Europe.

‘We envisage a period of high pressure and increasingly clear skies in the Italian property market,’ added Alessandro Riboni, who has nearly 20 years of experience in the sector.

OFFICE
The new office will offer a range of services including valuations, capital markets and agency and currently includes a staff of nine professionals with experience in real estate as well as in debt and loan servicing. By year-end, the group hopes to be able to grow its staff to 15 people in Milan while by 2015 it plans are to open an ancillary office in Rome, Riboni noted.

The office opening points to a change of direction in Italy’s property market, which has suffered from a lack of liquidity and a stagnant investment sector since the credit crisis, forcing a number of international companies including agent Savills to close office.

Knight Frank employs more than 12,500 in 330 offices across 48 countries and now has more than 80 offices across continental Europe.

‘We are following our institutional clients into this market and we already have a number of large mandates in the country,’ he added. Knight Frank is assisting two foreign institutional clients in the acquisition of a retail portfolio as well as a pharmaceutical group and a wealthy family looking to sell two portfolios of offices.

LOAN SALES
The agent has also been hired to advise an international client on the bidding for an NPL portfolio with a face value of €4 bn.

Italy has seen two major debt packages come to the market in the recent past. Unicredit Credit Management Bank, the lender's NPL management platformi, is selling a multi-billion loan book together with the NPL platform in one of the country’s largest property loan sales ever. UCMB services €53 bn of loans. Similarly, Banco Popolare is divesting its bad bank, Release, the owner of over €3.2 bn of non performing loans and properties.

Riboni has longstanding experience in loan servicing. Before joining Knight Frank, he worked at Archon group, the portfolio advisor for the Whitehall Funds in Italy. During his tenure at Archon as vice president of valuation and real estate loans, he managed the acquisition of over €3.5 bn of non performing loans in Italy.