Ralf Kind joins Edmond de Rothschild as new real estate debt chief

Kind, aged 48, will start in the new position from this month with a focus on growing Edmond de Rothschild's real estate debt business.

In his previous position Kind has been CEO/CFO of DEMIRE as well as CEO of Fair Value REIT. In 2013, he founded Arbireo Capital, an investment manager and advisory firm in the German real estate market.

Prior to that, he spent 12 years at Barclays Capital, in Frankfurt and London, where he worked in the Structured Finance Team and later led the Real Estate Investment Banking Team in the DACH region. He started his career at PwC in Tokyo in 1998.

'There is a compelling market opportunity for private real estate debt in Europe,' said Christophe Caspar, global head of Asset Management at Edmond de Rothschild Group. 'Traditional lenders are reducing their exposure to real estate, whilst borrowers are seeking flexible and reliable capital providers who can provide solutions in a competitive market. We are seeing a strong interest in debt strategies from investors around the world.'

In 2020, the group's focus will be on higher-yielding approaches with a pan-European origination strategy. This will enable borrowers to source the entire financing from a single source in an efficient manner. Over time the debt offering will be expanded with a more conservative senior debt strategy to provide investors full optionality and to replicate the highly successful Edmond de Rothschild infrastructure debt platform with currently €2.6 bn of AUM.

Rodney Bysh, CEO of Cording Real Estate Group: 'This 'one-stop-shopping' approach and our focus on higher-yielding loans mean that we are plugging a gap in the market, for borrowers and investors alike. The expertise and network of the Edmond de Rothschild real estate investment management pan-European platform is a key advantage for the sourcing of deals as well as the underwriting.'