Property company Cordea Savills has entered the real estate lending market with a platform to finance new commercial property and buy existing loans.
The firm announced today that it has appointed Keith Davidson and James Tarry to lead the team managing the platform. They join from Palatium Investment Management where Davidson was managing director and Tarry was a director.
The withdrawal of banks and other big lenders from the European commercial property market is creating a funding gap that non-bank lenders could fill.
Cordea Savills says the opportunity for non-bank lenders will increase as European banks continue to retreat from the commercial property market. Regulatory changes and the banks’ desire to reduce their balance sheets will drive this change.
“The debt funding gap is likely to continue in the medium term. It was not unexpected that more money was raised for debt funds in Europe in the third quarter of last year than for equity funds,” said Justin O’Connor, chief executive officer at Cordea Savills.
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