Maggie Chu Joins Savills to Lead Greater Bay Area Services

Veteran broker Maggie Chu has joined Savills to head up the property consultancy’s services on behalf of developers and investors in Guangdong province, Macau and Hong Kong, according to a company statement today.

Formerly an executive director with Cushman & Wakefield in the city, Chu’s new job title with Savills Hong Kong is deputy managing director and head of Greater Bay Area project sales and leasing, with the London-based agency vowing to grab a slice of southern China’s growth as the border between Hong Kong and Guangdong province blurs.

“Our Plc and Hong Kong Boards are adamant to secure a leading position in the real estate market in the GBA,” Savills said in a statement issued by both the firm’s global and local business units. “Maggie shall head this mission and be responsible for project sales and leasing business in GBA.”

Broker Reunion

The appointment, which took effect from 2 September, brings Chu back to Savills’ Hong Kong office after she left the firm in 2011.

With more than 30 years experience in both investment and leasing transactions, Chu joined Cushman & Wakefield in Hong Kong in 2012 as executive director for landlord and owner representation services, and stayed on after the firm merged with DTZ in 2015.

In mid-2019 the veteran broker led Wheelock’s sale by public tender of a trio of luxury houses at the developer’s Savannah project in Hong Kong’s Tseung Kwan O area for a combined HK$188.7 million, and her range of clients encompasses multinationals, Hong Kong and international developers, traditional family trusts and major investment funds.

In project leasing Chu was involved in the marketing of Sun Hung Kai’s ICC and Millennium City developments, Champion REIT’s Langham Place, Wing Tai’s Landmark East and Kerry Properties’ Enterprise Square.

In the investment market she contributed to Link REIT’s sale of a total of 29 shopping centres to privately managed funds including Gaw Capital and Blackstone, as well as to Wharf’s 2017 sale of what is now the Neo project in Kowloon East to mainland developer LVGEM for HK$9 billion.

Chu is understood to have resigned from her role at C&W in May of this year.

Betting on the Bay

From 2017 to 2019, Chu was involved in over HK$52 billion worth of real estate transactions representing some 5 million square feet (464,515 square metres) of space, according to Savills.

The brokerage firm, which maintains offices in 18 mainland cities in addition to Hong Kong has been ramping up its Asia presence in recent years, including opening a new office in Fuzhou in 2019. That foothold in the capital of Fujian province came after the company had opened three new China offices in 2018.

With Chu’s appointment, Savills is targetting opportunities to serve landlords and developers in the Greater Bay area, with Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other mainland cities together with Hong Kong and Macau creating a potential market of over 70 million people who generate an aggregate GDP of $1.5 trillion annually.