Knight Frank has hired former ING REIM heavyweights Kevin Aitchison and Ian Whittock as it continues to rebuild its fund management arm.
The pair, who were the Dutch fund manager’s UK chief executive and chief investment officer, respectively, before its £900m takeover by CBRE, will join Knight Frank Investors in March next year.
Aitchison will become overall head of KFI, which has £500m of assets under management, and Whittock will be head of strategy.
The duo’s remit is to “significantly grow the business”, which emerged in 2010 from the property agent’s previous fund management arm, Rutley Capital Partners, after it was hit by the downturn.
The firm was set up as a segregated investment management service to pension funds, insurance companies, private banks and high-net-worth individuals. It has previously said it aims to be managing total assets of £1bn by April 2013.
In April this year, the firm was jointly appointed with Gresham Down to advise Santander on a push to more than triple the size of its Irish-listed property fund, GlanEuro, which owns €68m (£58m) of properties in the UK and has been renamed Luri 5.
Along with some large private investors, other key accounts include the Lancashire County Pension Fund, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, and Westbury Commercial Property Fund.
Aitchison and Whittock will work closely with John Styles and Deborah Watt, who have been developing the firm for the past two years and “remain pivotal to the development of the business going forward”.
Alistair Elliott, head of KF’s commercial division, said: “Investment management is core to our business and is a service we are continuing to grow. The recruitment of Kevin and Ian is an important strategic development for the firm.
“It was always the plan that we should explore ways of achieving a quantum leap in this area and I am confident that Kevin and Ian will play a big part in achieving this.”
