This week’s people in the news sees several familiar faces taking on new roles. Taikang Asset Management promoted its newest director from within while JLL’s new International Director of Corporate Solutions has been with the firm for more than 15 years. Also making news this week are KaiLong which appointed a new managing director and Ping An Real Estate which hired their latest Senior Vice Director from a Fosun Group subsidiary. Keep reading for all the details.
Thaili Chi has joined KaiLong Real Estate as a Managing Director. The Warburg Pincus affiliate has invested more than US$1.6 billion in 31 real estate projects since being founded in 2004. In his new role, Chi will assist in the identifying, evaluating, acquiring and managing of the firm’s assets. Before joining the business park investment specialist, Chi worked at Tishman Speyer as a Senior Director. The former Tae Kwon Do champion has also worked in the US and Singapore.
Alex He has been named as Director at Taikang Asset Management after spending nearly a year and a half at the firm as a Senior Manager where he led the overseas asset management team. Taikang, the asset management arm of Beijing-based Taikang Life Insurance, had more than RMB 830 billion of assets under their management at the end of 2015. Last year, it became the first mainland Chinese insurance firm to expand into the mutual fund space.
Ian Bottrell takes 
over as International Director of Corporate Solutions at JLL. The former Australian Army officer has been with the firm for more than 15 years and was most recently based in Shanghai as head of facilities management for North Asia. Bottrell joined JLL in January 2001 after working for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games as the Venue General Manager. His new role will see him based in the company’s New York office.
Veteran CBRE broker Nick Rose will be headed back to the UK at the end of this month, after more than 11 years with the real estate agency in China. Rose, who is currently a Senior Director with the Office Services team at CBRE, fought through some serious health issues in the past year to return to his team in Shanghai and is now back on the job with clients and co-workers. The London native is currently weighing opportunities in his hometown, where Chinese investors continue to shop for bargains post-Brexit.
Rand Sobczak Jr. has been promoted to Director of Worldwide Occupier Services for Asia Pacific at Savills. He will be working in the firm’s Singapore office after a six-year stint in Shanghai as Associate Director where he specialized in tenant representation. During that time the Savills vet teamed with Head of China Research James MacDonald on articles published in the Wharton Real Estate Review and by the International Council of Shopping Centers.
King Leo Zhang joins Ping An Real Estate as a Senior Vice Director of Industrial Logistics. Zhang moves to the insurance giant after less than nine months at Stater Capital, the industrial property investment subsidiary of Fosun Group. He served as Director of Sales and Marketing at Stater. Prior to that, he spent six years at the United Development Corp, a branch of Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone Group, working in various roles.
Ingrid Zhu has been appointed as Principal at KKR Asia as the US private equity giant continues to build up its Asia real estate team. KKR, which pioneered leveraged buyouts in the US, brought former Blackstone executive Rob Yang on board in June as its new head of Greater China real estate, and has also made other additions to the team in the last year. Zhu previously spent six years at Ivanhoe Cambridge China serving as Director of Investment and Asset Management. She also worked as Deputy Design Manager at Shui On Land for five years and has a Bachelor of Architecture from Tongji University in addition to an MBA from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
As usual, if you know of other China real estate professionals changing their jobs, getting promoted or just doing something exciting, please feel free to share with the rest of the community here at Mingtiandi.
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