Heavyweights quit tech firm

Two property heavyweights have quit tech start-up Cloudscraper due to “differences of opinion” with the firm’s founder Moses Gottlieb. Matt Webster, the former head of global real estate finance at HSBC, and Rawle Howard, former European head of private real estate debt at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, have both left the business. Webster joined in January 2018 as chief financial officer and Howard joined in September 2018 as global head of capital markets. Cloudscraper was launched in early 2019 with the claim of being the world’s first fully integrated institutional real estate trading data platform for buying, selling and financing assets. It links commercial real estate trading opportunities, stakeholders, their advisers, equity and debt capital into an independent data ecosystem that strives to radically reduce transaction times. Eran Baram, co-chief executive and chief operating officer of Cloudscraper, said the departures were “a natural thing in a start-up” and that the business would be continuing as usual. He said a search for a new chief financial officer would begin next year but that Rawle’s position would not be replaced. Baram added that the platform now had 280 global real estate organisations on board, representing in excess of €400bn (£358bn) of commercial real estate. However, while Baram said that €1.8bn had “passed through” the platform, no transactions have yet been completed through Cloudscraper. Baram said the first full trade was “very close”. The departure of Webster and Howard leaves just one real estate expert at the start-up: Josh Phillips, who joined as global head of implementation and adoption from Hanover Street Capital last October.   To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette