Property consultancy Bond Wolfe is in talks to buy another management business as it eyes its target of £10bn in assets under management.
Chief investment officer Bobby Bassi said the potential acquisition would “comfortably double” its assets under management from £3bn at present. “Then we won’t be too far off the £10bn target,” Bassi said.
The talks follow the company’s acquisition last year of a 50% stake in property management company CBGA Robson, which has offices in London and Birmingham.
Bond Wolfe chief executive Gurpreet Bassi said the business was also having conversations with other potential acquisition targets, with brokerage and finance being key priorities for growth.
The continued expansion drive comes as it celebrates its 40th anniversary, marked by a party for more than 300 staff, clients and friends at Birmingham Town Hall last night (4 July).
Co-founded by entrepreneur Paul Bassi – uncle to Gurpreet and father to Bobby – and the late Rory Daly in 1983, the business has been through various iterations (see below) and the team now refers to it as “Bond Wolfe 2.0”.
The business is backed by the family’s Bassi Capital and is now debt free, with its last significant piece of debt paid off ahead of former prime minster Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini-Budget last year. The aim is to keep growing Bond Wolfe into a multidisciplinary property business, Gurpreet Bassi said.
“If a deal turns up that is too big for us to do out of cash, then we’ve got the ability to leverage up slightly,” Bobby Bassi said.
Rooted in Birmingham and the West Midlands, Bond Wolfe increasingly sees itself as a national firm. This is now underlined by a physical presence through the CBGA deal and Bassi’s support of the Watling Real Estate management buy-out. “The Watling deal has given us a shopfront in Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and London,” Gurpreet Bassi said.
Backing the real estate restructuring firm, where the team already had relationships with Bond Wolfe from its time at GVA and Avison Young, is also designed to strengthen the business through the cycle.
“A lot of the purely agency businesses at the moment are noticing a massive slowdown, whereas we have a fairly resilient business regardless of the stage we’re at in the economic or property cycle,” Gurpreet Bassi said.
“I think the pain is only just starting,” Bobby added. “In terms of opportunities from a [property] buying point of view, I think we are still six months away from that, maybe 12 months.”
Gurpreet rejoined the business in 2019, launching Bond Wolfe Auctions with Ian Tudor. The following year, Bond Wolfe moved its agency business into Birmingham from West Bromwich.
It has since gone from being a back-office function for the family property portfolio to a fast-growing agency, fuelled in part by the auctions business. Where high street stock used to be its focus, the agency business is now picking up bigger-ticket sales instructions, such as an £11m student block. It is currently pitching for the sales instruction of a £25m residential block, Bobby Bassi said.
The auctions and agency team sold a combined £210m of stock last year, up by 20% on the previous year. “We are on track to beat that again this year,” Gurpreet Bassi said, adding that its main challenge now is recruitment.
Each business it acquires retains its own management board or team, but Gurpreet said he also plans to formalise a combined board with representatives from each company.
At 37 and 33 respectively, Gurpreet and Bobby are determined to keep growing the property business that has been part of their lives from childhood. “We are creating a younger boardroom. We are all in our 30s and 40s,” Gurpreet said. “It’s nice to have like-minded people to bounce ideas off. It’s great really.”
Bond Wolfe – 40 years of growth
- 1983 – Bond Wolfe is founded
- 2006 – The company acquires Bigwood
- 2007 – Acquisition of Black Country residential agency Paul Dubberley
- 2007 – Bond Wolfe buys a stake in publicly listed Real Estate Investors plc
- 2011 – Bigwood merges with Curry & Partners to create CPBigwood
- 2016 – CPBigwood is acquired by SDL to create SDL Bigwood
- 2019 – Bond Wolfe Auctions is launched, joining the agency team
- 2021 – The company takes a 50% stake in See You Social to create BW Media
- 2022 – Bond Wolfe acquires 50% of CBGA Robson
- 2023 – Bassi Capital supports the MBO of the real estate restructuring team of Avison Young, creating Watling Real Estate
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