In this week’s edition of People in the News, Indian billionaire property tycoon Niranjan Hiranandani has decided to pass on the baton to his 36-year-old son, Darshan Hiranandani, naming him as the group chief executive officer of Hiranandani Group.
In other new appointments around the region, ARA Asset Management has hired a new head of capital markets, while the chairman of China Minsheng Investment Group’s property arm takes on an additional role following a resignation, and Knight Frank appoints a new head for the property agent’s luxury homes business in Singapore.
Indian Billionaire Niranjan Hiranandani, who is India’s sixth richest property tycoon, has named his son Darshan Hiranandani as group chief executive officer of his real estate business, Hiranandani Group. The 36-year-old, who holds a master’s degree in entrepreneurship and finance from the Rochester Institute of Technology, had already been in charge of Hiranandi Group’s Dubai property interests as well as the group’s energy business H-Energy. The group owns 1,800 acres (six million metres) of land in India that it plans to use in part to set up a data centres business through Yotta Infrastructure.
Jae Choi has relocated to Singapore to join ARA Asset Management as head of capital markets after five years with Forum Partners where he was a managing director. Prior to this, Choi co-founded Asia Asset Managers in 2012, and served as a senior vice president for Blackstone from 2010 to 2012. He also held a director-level position at Merrill Lynch between 2008 and 2010, and was an executive at GE Capital from 2003 until 2008.
Peng Xinkuang has been appointed as the chief executive officer of SRE Group, the property arm of troubled China Minsheng Investment Group, following the resignation of former chief executive officer Liu Feng, who is leaving to pursue his own business interests. Peng will take up his new role in addition to being an executive director and chairman of the board, having been appointed for a term of three years on 24 October 2017. Peng, who is currently the chairman of the board of China Minsheng Jiaye Investment and a director of Shenzhen-listed Yango Group, previously served as SRE Group’s chief executive officer for two years from 2015.
Alan Tan has been named by Knight Frank Singapore as the head of the company’s luxury residential agency business KF Property Network, following the departure of Tan Tee Khoon, who had been the key executive officer of KF Property Network. In his new role, Tan leads a team of over 600 sales professionals, and reports to Wendy Tang, group managing director of Knight Frank in Sinapore. Tan had previously worked in sales for Hong Leong Holdings and Marga Landmark in China and Myanmar, as well as being head of projects at HSR International Realtors.
Timothy Chen has been named as a senior director in the strategic advisory team at Knight Frank after parting ways with Colliers International where he was a director of research for East China for four years. In his new role, Chen is tasked with growing Knight Frank’s research capability in the commercial property investment sector and the South China market, as well as assisting frontline teams in an advisory capacity to secure and deliver consulting assignments. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University graduate has also previously worked for Atkins as a principal consultant and JLL as an associate director.
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts has hired Kurt Macher as the general manager of the company’s hotel at the Shard in London after leaving Swire Hotels where he had served as the general manager of the Temple House in Chengdu for three years. Prior to this, Macher had been a group director in the projects and rooms division at Marco Polo Hotels Group from 2015 until 2016 and an executive assistant manager at both the Peninsula in Hong Kong and New York between 2011 and 2013. He was a finalist in the General Manager of the Year category at the China Hotelier Awards in 2018.
Sunny Hung
has joined WeWork in Shanghai as a senior associate in the serviced office operator’s real estate advisory division after leaving CBRE where she served as a manager (project lead) in the investment advisory service for capital markets for two years. Prior to this, Hung worked for real estate brokerage Lianjia for three years, most recently as an investor relations manager between 2015 and 2016, and as a senior associate in the retail consultancy team from 2013 until 2015. The graduate of National Taiwan University and Cass Business School also served as a consultant at Cushman and Wakefield in the property agent’s industrial team.
If you know of other Asia real estate professionals changing their jobs, getting promoted or just doing something exciting, please contact us here at Mingtiandi.
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