CBRE buys UK debt platform Laxfield Capital

CBRE has acquired real estate debt investment business Laxfield Capital. The firm, which has around £818m of assets under management in the UK, will operate as part of the EMEA platform of CBRE Global Investors. Laxfield’s executive team includes managing director Emma Huepfl, head of investments Alexandra Lanni and fund manager for debt investments Chris McMain. The company’s founder Adam Slater will continue to chair the debt business in a consultancy role. They will be joined by Marco Rampin, who joined CBRE GI’s EMEA business earlier this year from CBRE Capital Advisors. He will continue to focus on the continental European debt business. Laxfield Capital is hoping the tie-up with CBRE GI will allow it to expand its business into Europe, having to date been focused solely on the UK market. Huepfl said: “We were very attracted by the opportunity to scale up our business more quickly than we could have done by ourselves, particularly the fact that CBRE Global Investors has a great European office network, and we have been wanting for some time to find a way to expand our lending products into Europe. That’s quite difficult to do without feet on the ground. “We want to scale up substantially, but it depends on which product areas we decide to focus on.” Huepfl believes that while the UK will continue to be the most liquid debt market in Europe, tightening bank regulations on the continent and a possible increase in the speed of restructuring of European banks over the next few years with the Basel IV reforms coming into force in 2022 could see the banks becoming more risk averse and creating an opportunity for non-bank lenders. She added that Laxfield Capital had also decided to sell the business to CBRE because “as a small business it’s always hard work to do capital raising”. “CBRE GI has fantastic institutional relationships and a ready client base looking for real estate debt products and on their side were trying to find a way to offer that. So there’s a good match in terms of what they needed and what we wanted to do.” Sophie van Oosterom, chief executive and chief operating officer of CBRE Global Investors EMEA, said: “With the acquisition of Laxfield Capital, we add in-depth knowledge of the commercial real estate debt business, an experienced team of professionals with a long-standing, excellent reputation and strong market profile.” In a statement, Laxfield’s leadership team added: “CBRE Global Investors is an excellent platform from which to serve our clients, accelerate growth and broaden our products into continental Europe. This felt like the right time for us to partner with the world’s leading commercial real estate services organisation. We are excited to step into our new roles within CBRE’s Global Investors’ Debt Investments business.” This acquisition follows the completion of CBRE’s £267.4m acquisition of Telford Homes last month and its push into the UK ‘s flexible workspace sector with Hana, CBRE’s flexible workspace provider, earlier this year. Earlier this month, CBRE reported a 17% drop in pretax profit for the third quarter. The agent’s profit fell to $321.5m (£250m), down from $386.7m in Q3 2018. However, total revenue grew to $5.9bn during the three months ended September 30, up 13% from the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA fell 2% to $454.6m for the six months ended 30 June 2019 compared to the first half of 2018, while basic income per share fell 10 cents to $0.76. To send feedback, e-mail louise.dransfield@egi.co.uk or tweet @DransfieldL or @estatesgazette