Alex Jordan and Liam Coughlan have left their roles at Skanska to set up their own venture, IV Real Estate.
The company will own, develop and asset manage commercial properties, predominantly in the London and Bristol markets.
Jordan said: “We are trying to identify and buy buildings with investors and actually be the landlord ourselves.”
Coughlan added: “The business model for IV has two approaches. One is using private investors to deploy their equity as a propco business, buying buildings, redeveloping them ourselves and managing the whole process.
“The alternative is finding opportunities in the market where we don’t deploy our own equity in but instead work with investors as joint venture partners to deliver out on their behalf, acting as a more conventional development manager.”
A consortium of high-net-worth individuals from predominantly the US and the Middle East backs IVRE, which is looking to deploy equity into the UK market.
The company is also approaching funds and small private equity businesses.
IVRE also has a partnership with construction and interior design business Thirdway, owned by Ben Gillam.
Coughlan said: “We can leverage the benefit of Ben’s business to de-risk, in terms of construction costs, certainty of delivery and also working with such a wide range of tenants every day of the week, we make sure we are developing buildings which are as attractive as possible to the market.”
Both founders previously held roles at Skanska, where Jordan worked as a leasing director and marketing director and Coughlan was a development director.
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