The property division at NatWests fund manager Gartmore is leaving to join Richard Ellis St Quintin.
The move will help REStQ to recover ground in fund management and is the centrepiece of a plan to set up Atlantic Fund Management – an independent, wholly owned subsidiary.
With around £400m under management, Richard Ellis has lost market share since its heyday in the late 1970s when it managed 22 segregated funds.
After last year’s takeover by US real estate group Insignia, REStQ board director and head of consultancy Ted Webster was given the job of turning this round. He said: “We need to move it back up to £1bn to £2bn to put us in the fund management business rather than it being a subsidiary of the brokerage business.”
Webster said Atlantic would have between £700m and £800m under management.
Gartmores team, headed by Simon Radford, brings in all Gartmores current clients, including the Lothbury Property Unit Trust, which will be the first PUT to be managed by a firm of property consultants.
Radford said that the Lothbury trust will have £250m of assets and be built around the remaining growth properties in NatWest Group Pension Funds direct portfolio, which is being liquidated. NatWest will be an investor, but because the trust will be based in Dublin, it will be open to overseas funds.
Webster said that the trend for pension funds like NatWest to sell out of direct property was “a window of opportunity we havent seen for 20 years” for indirect vehicles such as PUTs.
Neither Gartmore nor REStQ would disclose the price and the deal is subject to due diligence.
EGi News 26/11/99
