"LPs are increasingly looking for specialist / vertically integrated managers, so the pure play traditional managers will not have much capital to invest very soon," was the feedback received by me privately from one of the senior industry executives after Andrew Baum and I launched our paper discussing the challenges the shift towards operational real estate poses to real estate investment managers.
Last week, we ran our second ULI Europe event as part of the annual European conference in Milan on the topic of operational real estate and the power shift to platforms with specialist sector knowledge and expertise, laying the foundation for the ULI Europe Operational Real Estate Council launch to ensure we have the forum to consistently debate the topic and move the whole industry forward in line with the broader mission and purpose of the ULI.
Huge thanks to all the forum speakers who shared their perspectives on a number of critical considerations that the rise of operational real estate sectors brings:
- How to align risks and incentives between investors and operators? Nicole Mitchell, Marcin Juszczyk, Michael Motz
- How to build an operationally competent fund manager? Simone Pozzato
- What are the benefits of the fully integrated model? René K. Mortensen
- What challenges does it bring at a leadership level? Rebekah Tobias
- What are the benefits of staying independent? Jakob Stoumann
Huge thanks also to Carl-Johan Collet for your help co-chairing the session, to Lisette Van Doorn, Sebastian Ives, Simon Chinn, Sabine Georgi, Juliette C. Masson and Inger Kammeraat for making this session happen, and to all the attendees for joining the debate! Amy Erixon, Rebecca Matts, Arabella Edwards, Anna Andreen, James MacNamara, Aref Lahham, James Shannon, Rebeca Guzman Vidal, Imogen Thompson, Thibault Weston Smith, Gareth Lewis, Boris Olujic, Simone Knopf, Mariya Tsvetkova, Lars T., Kirill Zavodov
