CBRE launches Deal Flow platform and Small Caps team in UK
CBRE has launched Deal Flow, a new digital platform in the UK, in a bid to create an additional avenue to connect investors with properties across the national market. The firm also announced the creation of a small capital team to advise on deals below £10 million, chaired by industry veteran PJ Thibault as the firm aims to increase its presence in the small-cap segment of the UK real estate advisory market.
CBRE has launched Deal Flow, a new online listing platform service for the UK market. With the country cited by a recent report from the firm as the top destination for investment, Britain remains a key area of interest for global property investors, while its capital remains a key hub of interest for retail players, with London cited as the second biggest hot-spot city for investment in 2016.
Developed by CBRE to provide property investors with information of the company’s open-market sales across all sectors and geographies, the real estate consulting firm hopes that Deal Flow will enable them better serve its global investor base with offerings on the market in the UK. In addition, the firm says that the new tool will boost transactions due to its ability to identify and match investor trends.
Commenting on the UK-launch of the new Deal Flow platform, Stephen Hubbard, Chairman of CBRE UK, said, “Technology is becoming an ever more important consideration for the real estate industry and this new platform will provide us with a state of the art marketing tool which will allow us to provide a more efficient service for clients across the globe.”
The new service follows the roll-out of CBRE’s Small Caps team, a bespoke service for small-cap investors, earlier this year. The team is focused on supporting deals valued at £10 million or less, for which the firm’s services were leveraged 207 times in 2016, with a total transaction value of £785 million. The new team, as well as Deal Flow service, expand the firm’s wider presence in the market by driving a new source of revenue – outside its traditional high-profile transactions.
The new initiative is chaired by PJ Thibault, Executive Director at CBRE and Head of the Portfolio and Special Situations team. A former Equity Partner of Cushman and Wakefield of some 23 years, Thibault said of the specialist team’s creation, “CBRE is well known in the UK market for transacting on large, high profile lot sizes but is less associated with successes in small cap markets. The foundation of our business is to provide expertise in all deals no matter what the size and the Small Caps team will provide a tailored, bespoke service to investors looking at these smaller transactions. The real estate market is changing rapidly, and small commercial real estate deals have grown increasingly attractive to investors wishing to step up the property ladder from the auction market or move across from residential investment.”
