Simon Cooke takes equity stake in private equity group Hotbed
Former Deutsche Property Asset Management chief executive Simon Cooke has joined a private equity group to develop a property investment service for wealthy individuals.
Cooke has taken an equity stake in year-old private equity group Hotbed, which was set up by former 3i executives.
Hotbed has contacts with a large number of wealthy individuals who invest between £25,000 and £3m in a variety of projects, which will now include property investment.
“I will be looking for three types of investment: very low risk, medium risk – with some active management needed – and very risky propositions, with appropriate returns,” said Cooke.
He said Hotbed would initially target properties of £3m-£10m properties, but would end up operating in the £5m-£50m range. “I reckon we can get up to £50m-£100m in the first year,” said Cooke.
He will source the properties and carry out due diligence before offering them to Hotbed’s investors. The private equity firm gets arrangement and management fees from the deals, as well as a cut of profits.
“This is a great opportunity for me to get back to doing the sort of investment work I started off in but also having an equity stake in a range of PE deals,” said Cooke.
Gary Robins, chief executive of Hotbed, said: “We are delighted to have someone with Simon’s track record on board to spearhead our property arm.
“His property fund management experience will be central to the development of this service to meet the increasing demand we are seeing from private investors.”
Cooke will stay on as a consultant to DePAM – through his CRE8 consultancy – to at least the end of the year, because it has not found a replacement for him since he left in February.
