REAL ESTATE AND INFRASTRUCTURE PRACTICE

Owning, occupying, developing, building, leasing, investing in, and buying and selling Real Assets requires specialized expertise, as do the organizations and people who are managing them. Over the last several decades delivering real estate services to diverse and demanding clients has been getting tougher.  Everyone involved in the business has seen major industry and economic changes.  But not unlike the rest of corporate world, the real estate industry has not always kept pace.

Our consultants and advisors have demonstrated thought leadership in providing groundbreaking approaches and tangible results for clients, like you, who are focused on levering the utility real estate assets to produce enhanced business results.  Our thinking and solutions focus not only optimizing the value of the assets or use of assets but including the value of enhanced productivity for end users and owner/investors who are simultaneously challenged by the issues inherent in developing and motivating effective teams during turbulent times.

Today, the high value and cost of real assets requires new management models that leverage your investment both financially and operationally.  The basic requirements of good people with the right competencies in the right places doing the right things at the right times for the right rewards is no longer enough. It may sound complicated, but there are approaches to assure that organizations can thrive during good times and still survive the inevitable cyclical down turns. To help our clients succeed, we use best practices that are based on our hands-on experience with companies around the world in all aspects of real asset enterprises.

Some of the common issues we help our clients manage include:

How to improve a current leadership and management team that is mostly “home grown,” with little external experience in real estate management, organizational design, staffing, or reward management?

You view your industry as “different,” with special needs, and you believe that outsiders (consultants like us) try to overcomplicate it and use solutions from other (irrelevant) situations.

Meeting the bottom line goal is getting tougher and previous strategies aren’t working.

You have team members who have succeeded in the past and they can execute your plans, but they don’t always see the strategic issues and rarely contribute a new idea that truly breaks through the clutter and moves the enterprise forward.

We have the experience to help you plan and implement significant improvements to your business. From our extensive observations and experience, we have learned to understand the scenarios that work best for each player in the real estate and real asset business. We know how to determine requirements for operations, transactions, capital planning, risk management, and more; and, we look at our clients’ businesses from every perspective (owner, operator, manager, staff, customer, user, and regulator), assess the organization (today’s structure and tomorrow’s opportunities), and evaluate the people (those who are there now and those you should have or wish you had on board).

Most important, we know the best practices for managing your human capital to succeed against the above challenges.  We can help you decide where and when to:

Hire,
Restructure,
Reward,
Replace or upgrade.

We know our approach works and we know why: because we don’t use a cookie cutter approach; we apply our experience to your specific needs.  We don’t settle for easy answers and we don’t think it will be easy. We can work with you on one key hire or position upgrade, or we can help you reorganize the structure, process, and rewards for your team.

REAL ESTATE AND INFRASTRUTURE PRACTICE

 INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT AND CAPITAL MARKETS

Our client is an exceptionally successful top tier private equity firm – a specialist in European commercial property. While investing primarily in Europe, they also raise capital globally. The founders of the firm are talented, well respected professionals who have worked together for over 20 years. One of the founders, however, was considering retiring. This created the need for a highly confidential search. Why confidential? Until they knew they could find an executive who met their criteria and would be regarded by capital sources and other constituencies as being truly exceptional, there was no need to create an environment of uncertainty. 

The primary client relationship resided with Taplow North America. As the client was based in a major European city, however, the decision was made to form a Single Point of Contact team including both a European expert in real estate and capital markets and the Taplow North American team. Recruiting top performing investment and capital markets professionals who are likely to be successful in a new role and a new environment is, at best, a difficult task. While we reviewed our entire list of prospects with our client to rule out and include specific names, our process assured all parties that confidentiality would be preserved until client interviewing began.

Candidates sourced from Europe, Asia, Australia, The Emirates and North America were considered for this role. All were globalists and included minority and female representation. Interviews were conducted by the Single Point of Contact team with each candidate being interviewed separately twice to assure a highest possible level of conviction. Confidentiality was maintained internally until after the selection could be announced and externally until very shortly before the start date delayed by a typical notice and garden leave requirement.

For further information contact Steve Schrenzel, USA

 TEAM ACQUISITION

Our client was a global Real Estate investment manager with an excellent reputation in the market. They needed to fast track a product solution offering into new markets. Discussions with us identified the markets for expansion. They were open to considering a “lift out”, joint venture or strategic alliance. We recommended that they seek a friendly “lift out” of an established team, preferably with assets, as well as the expertise and experience in offering a specific strategy in their target markets where the current distribution team could enable rapid growth.

Extensive research was undertaken, asset and performance data was collected and assessed on each potential team, and human capital resources were reviewed for potential fit with our client’s leadership team. Based on our assessment, our client chose the teams they wished to pursue. A discreet approach was made to the senior executive of each team and detailed discussions were held without breaching confidentiality. Interested parties were reviewed in depth with the client, NDA’s signed and meetings arranged.

Our client was able to go into discussions with potential teams armed with in-depth analyses of the strengths and fit to their requirements, data rooms were set up to review confidential documentation, and final agreements reached as to the timing and scope of the team’s remit when joining the company.

For further information contact Steve Schrenzel, USA

 MARKET ENTRY

A well-known and well respected professional service firm with an unrivalled reputation in the real estate operations and technology business was increasingly being sought out by non-North American clients. To more effectively service their current and prospective clients they recognized the need to develop an EMEA leadership team. Realizing the differences in markets and the need for a market leader who truly understood EMEA markets, they sought to define their needs and create their first ever senior leadership role outside of North America.

The North American executive team was well known to us, but understanding the similarities and differences required for a market entry role necessitated extensive discussions and analyses which enabled us to develop position requirements that focused not only on the technical, leadership and business development skills, but also on cultural issues and the adaptability to work with EMEA clients and North American business practices. 

We recognized that the wrong leader could not only fail in EMEA but could also damage the client’s reputation across their entire marketplace. Candidates were sought from across Europe and North America. Introductory discussions took place in complete confidentiality. As the fit was as important as the skill set of the candidates, a short list from three European countries was developed and client meetings were arranged. The preferred candidate then travelled to North America to meet additional decision makers over a weekend. The candidate joined the firm and has successfully built the European office into a critical hub for the company while simultaneously expanding its client base within the corporate and public space. 

For further information contact Steve Schrenzel, USA