Introducing your Briefing Presenters

Chair:

Heather Buttle

Heather is a partner in the Finance group based in London at Taylor Wessing LLP. She acts for banks, insurance companies, mezzanine lenders, developers and property companies on a wide range of real estate financings including development, portfolio (both UK and cross border), hotel, investment, commercial and residential property secured loans. Heather has previously undertaken secondments at an international law firm in Moscow, at The Royal Bank of Scotland in their corporate real estate team and at GE Capital Real Estate.

Speakers:

Josh Abrahams

Josh started his career at Lloyds Bank in the capital markets and commercial real estate divisions. He joined Knight Frank Debt Advisory team in October 2019 and has been involved in arranging and advising in excess of £500m of CRE debt transactions across multiple sectors and jurisdictions.

Miles Auger

Miles has been involved in the valuation of single assets, hotel portfolios and development sites across the UK and Europe on behalf of owners, lenders and developers since 2010 when he joined CBRE.  Assets have ranged from luxury city based hotels to resort and country house hotels.  Prior to joining CBRE Hotels, Miles worked at Savills Commercial undertaking valuation, consultancy and investment agency advise in Healthcare and Hotels, at Lambert Smith Hampton, valuing all types of commercial property and providing consultancy advice to public and private clients in respect of compulsory purchase and compensation, rating, telecoms and some management.
 

Fred Cleary

Fred has 20+years of experience in the Capital Markets in both asset management and investment banking with a focus on UK, EUR and US inflation. In 2003 Fred joined UBS as head of Global Inflation-Linked Strategy, where he continued to produce inflation-linked research for the global inflation-market whilst working closely with trading and sales to help develop the franchise. In late 2004 he moved into a trading role for US TIPS securities and moved to New York, where he ran market-making for four years before returning to London where he also took on the responsibility for market-making in Euro inflation-linked debt. Fred joined Hermes Investment Managers, who ran some of the largest segregated inflation-linked mandates in the UK in 2009, as Strategist for the inflation-linked and government bond portfolios where he worked closely on product development with the Portfolio Managers and risk management. In 2012 Fred returned to inflation trading joining Nomura International with a dual mandate to trade cash and derivative global inflation products and to help broaden their position in the inflation markets.
 

Ion Fletcher

Ion Fletcher is the Director of Finance and Commercial Policy at the British Property Federation (BPF). He is responsible for developing the UK real estate industry’s response to policy decisions affecting real estate businesses from a tax, finance and commercial perspective – everything from SDLT to CVAs and town centres. Ion was previously a tax advisor in Ernst & Young’s real estate group.

Tom France

Tom is a chartered surveyor with 11 years’ experience in the development and investment industry specialising in student accommodation and residential acquisitions. Tom is Senior Vice President, Development, at Round Hill Capital and whilst at Round Hill, he has set up complex joint ventures with capital partners as well as raising debt on a number of projects with senior banks and mezzanine finance providers. Tom has acquired in excess of 12 development assets across Europe to provide in excess of 3,500 PBSA beds and is involved in residential, industrial and student housing sectors across UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands and Germany.
 

Sarah Green

Sarah Green is a hotel finance professional with expertise in funding and developing hotels. Sarah has worked at both Barclays and RBS where she specialised in development finance for branded hotels. Most recently, she was Development Director for Hilton working with developers and investors to grow Hilton’s brands across the UK. Sarah’s extensive experience in hotel lending, hotel brands and the negotiation of Franchise & Management Agreements gives her unique insight into the needs of all stakeholders involved in financing hotels.
 

Arthur Jennings

Arthur is Managing Director at Fortwell Capital and has ultimate responsibility for the origination, underwriting and portfolio management of the Fortwell Capital loan book. Arthur joined the company as Head of Real Estate Finance in May 2016 and was appointed director in 2017, joining the board. Arthur partnered Fortwell Capital’s Executive Director, Dan Smith, in the 2018 MBO and is a shareholder in the company. Arthur has c. 13 years’ experience in UK banking markets, principally within the real estate sector. He started his career at RBS in the London REF team before moving into a role within Restructuring to assist with the management and recovery of defaulting loan positions across the c. £5bn portfolio. Prior to joining Fortwell, Arthur spent 2 years at Qatar National Bank establishing their Real Estate Finance portfolio, transacting over £2.5bn of debt finance.
 

Dr Nicole Lux

Dr Nicole Lux is a Senior Research Follow at Cass Business School, City University of London with over 15 years of banking experience. Throughout her career, she has worked in loan origination and distressed asset workout at leading international banks such as Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. She is now the lead author of the Commercial Real Estate Lending Report at City Business School and COO at Finloop, a B2B digital lending platform for commercial real estate.
 

Scott Marshall

Having worked in the financial services sector for over 15 years, Scott has extensive experience in property lending, development finance & bridging loans.  As an expert in specialist lending, Scott established Roma Finance in 2008, reinventing & simplifying the bridging process to materially reduce completion times to less than a third of the industry standard.  Scott’s vision for Roma Finance is to put customers at the centre of the process and increase efficiencies to benefit all involved parties, ultimately helping customers create wealth for themselves and their families.

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Adrian Moloney

Adrian joined OneSavings Bank in December 2015, and has recently taken on the role of Group Sales Director, responsible for all field and telephone based sales teams across all group lending brands including Precise Mortgages, Kent Reliance for Intermediaries, and InterBay Commercial.  Adrian joined OneSavings Bank from Nationwide, where he was a senior member of the Corporate Account team and possesses over 21 years of industry experience, including time at Mortgage Trust and Portman Building Society.  He is a highly respected industry spokesperson and keynote speaker and was previously named Mortgage Personality of the Year at the prestigious Mortgage Strategy Awards 2018 and he also won Business Leader: Complex Buy-to-Let Lender at the 2020 British Specialist Lending Awards.
 

Shaun Talbot 

Highly experienced Commercial and Corporate Banker supporting the accelerated growth aspirations of the Clydesdale Bank through the origination and management of SME and Mid-Market businesses within the Hotel & Leisure sector and the provision of structured borrowing facilities.
 

Stephen Todd

Stephen is the co-founder of VAS Group, which includes valuation panel management and valuation audit/assurance services.  He has nearly two decades of experience in the loan security market.  He has held senior positions within large international property advisory companies, carrying out UK and pan European loan security and portfolio valuations for clients.

Adam Tyler

Adam’s career began as an officer in the Merchant Navy with Shell. Once ashore, he became involved in property development and sales, later becoming a mortgage broker and then an IFA. In the mid 90s, he worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland for 10 years and then in 2005, took the helm at the NACFB. During his 11-year tenure, he oversaw lending of around £100 billion from its members to UK SMEs. His time here allowed him to be involved in the changing shape of the industry during a period of unprecedented growth in the business lending market. He now runs his own finance platform, has a brokerage for the specialist property sector and is a Director of an SME lobbying group based in Westminster.