Paul Coates joins CBRE as Executive Director

CBRE has picked up former Royal Bank of Scotland Managing Director, Paul Coates. He arrives at the firm as an Executive Director and Head of Debt and Structured Finance for EMEA, tasked with meeting team demands in its fast-growing debt and structured finance segment.

Paul Coates was most recently at the Royal Bank of Scotland; working, throughout more than seventeen years at the institution, in increasingly senior roles. Most recently, between 2008 and 2017, he was a Managing Director and the Head of UK Real Estate Finance at RBS. Between 2005 and 2008, he was a Managing Director in the firm’s Real Estate Securitisation (UK and Europe) segment, having joined in 2001.

Coates joins CBRE as an Executive Director and Head of Debt and Structured Finance for the EMEA region. The role will see him, in concert with Executive Director Marco Pampin, tasked with the continued expansion of the firm’s team in the EMEA region, as well as increasing its debt advisory mandate. On both these fronts, the firm has had a relatively busy period in the past 18 months, with a total of 50 debt deals across Europe totalling €6 billion, and three new leadership hires. He will work with a team of 30 in the segment; the former holder of the role, Steve Williamson, will, meanwhile, take on the new role of Chairman of Debt and Structured Finance for EMEA.Commenting on the appointment, Richard Dakin, Managing Director of Capital Advisors at CBRE said that, “We always strive to give our clients a significant competitive advantage by delivering the best teams, expertise and market intelligence available from across our unrivalled global platform.”

Dakin added, “Paul is highly regarded throughout the industry and has the experience to help us deliver the strategic growth that is required for us to continue to deliver exceptional outcomes for clients. With our deep real estate knowledge of the global markets combined with our disciplined financial expertise, CBRE is better positioned than anyone to offer the full breadth of real asset and finance optionality.”

Speaking on his new role, Coates said, “I am delighted to be joining CBRE’s market leading Capital Advisors business and the best real estate platform in the world. I am looking forward to working with and developing the team to build on the existing strong track record of success and to seizing the growing number of advisory opportunities presenting themselves in the market currently.”