Savills IM teamed up with a Korean asset manager to buy a distribution centre in Poland last month
Veteran fund manager Greg Lapham has joined Savills Investment Management in Hong Kong, as the property investment arm of London-listed property services firm Savills continues to build its team in the region.
A representative of the firm confirmed to Mingtiandi that Lapham, who had left his role as BlackRock’s head of investments for Asia Pacific real estate last August, joined the company in March to work on investments across Asia Pacific for his new team.
Lapham’s appointment comes nine months after Savills IM hired Alex Jeffrey as its global chief executive officer, with the firm having termed the appointment of the former M&G Investments head of Asia Pacific as evidence of its determination to expand in the region.
In 2019 the firm had also added former Aetos Capital Real Estate vice president to its Singapore team as director of business development
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Savills IM will be hoping that Lapham can transfer the experience gleaned from six years at BlackRock and nearly 25 years in finance to help bolster his new employer’s growing team in the region.
Lapham joined Savills IM in Hong Kong in March
Prior to his time with the asset management giant in Hong Kong, Lapham had served for four years as chief financial officer for Asia at MGPA, a Singapore-based private equity investment firm that was acquired by BlackRock in 2013.
A University of Queensland pure maths graduate, Lapham had also served as the head of leveraged and acquisition finance for National Australia Bank from 2005 to 2008, after four years with PriceWaterhouseCoopers as the company’s director of global restructuring services.
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The news of Lapham’s appointment comes after Savills IM has sourced South Korean institutional capital for a series of acquisitions of European logistics assets through partnerships with Seoul’s Vestas Investment Management.
Just last month, Savills IM joined forces with its Korean counterpart to complete the €71 million ($78 million) acquisition of a 123,000 square metre (1.3 million square foot) Polish warehouse from Invesco Real Estate.
Savills said at the time that the purchase brought Vestas IM’s European logistics assets under management to €1 billion – €470 million of which is managed in partnership with Savills IM.
Savills IM is also heavily invested in Japan residential, having previously set up a series of funds targeting the country’s multifamily sector.
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