Tim speaks with the chief executive of Howard Group, a Cambridge-based family-owned property company. Howard Group, where Nicholas Bewes has been chief executive since 1999, is a Cambridge-based family business established in 1935 and one of the largest regional property investment and development companies in the UK.

Finance Director Philip Magnus has been at W.RE for five years, where he has seen the business grow to having a total of £1.5bn of assets under management. Having studied IT at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), he began his accounting and finance career by qualifying as a chartered accountant while working in the real estate audit department at BDO.

This is part of a series of articles where our contributors describe how they think things will look a year from now. With business needs changing, companies may re-evaluate the fit of their managers and non-executive directors

Paul Coates has been with CBRE for just under two years, having joined to build out the company’s debt advisory platform across EMEA. He previously spent more than 25 years in the real estate finance world, being part of some major UK corporate finance and development projects.

Oliver Fenn-Smith has almost 30 years’ experience in the commercial and residential property sectors in the West End of London and is chief executive of The Portman Estate. The 110-acre estate has been privately owned by the Portman family since 1532 and is today a vibrant, mixed-use portfolio centred around Portman Square in Marylebone.

Benn Zemek is the Chief Financial Officer of the Battersea Power Station project. Benn joined the project in early 2013, shortly after acquisition by the Malaysian consortium (SP Setia, Sime Darby Property and EPF). He has since played a key role in the successful transformation of the £9bn regeneration site, with a specific focus on leading the key funding and capital transactions and ongoing investment and financial management.

Caroline Rouse has more than 25 years experience as a finance director within the commercial and residential property sectors and is CFO at the Noé Group, a technology-led investment and asset management group. Prior to this she spent four years helping establish two start-ups: one a design-led residential development company and the other a student accommodation platform in the UK and Europe.

Jim Harding is Finance Director and Company Secretary at Eskmuir Properties Ltd, a private UK property investment business. Eskmuir is also asset manager and fund manager of The Diversified Property Fund for Charities which it established in 2015. Eskmuir has total assets under management of c.£330m.

Richard James is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Savills Investment Management (Savills IM), the wholly owned but independent investment management business of the Savills Group. He began his career at Ernst & Young (EY) in London, qualifying as a chartered accountant before moving to AREA (now Ares). In 2006, he became Portfolio CFO at Curzon Global Partners (now AEW Europe), and subsequently became CFO of the European property fund management business Internos.

Sandy Gumm is an Australian-qualified chartered accountant. She is chief operating officer of Prestbury Investments LLP, which is investment adviser to Secure Income REIT Plc, as well as a non-executive director of Secure Income REIT Plc. She trained at KPMG in Sydney and worked for nine years for that company in Sydney and London, before becoming group financial controller of Burford Holdings Plc in 1995. Joining Nick Leslau and Nigel Wray to establish Prestbury in 1997, she was appointed finance director when Prestbury Group Plc was listed that year, later becoming chief operating officer in 2007.

Philip is Founder & Managing Partner of 90 North, a real estate investment manager headquartered in London, with offices in Chicago, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney. Recently celebrating it’s 7th birthday, 90 North was established with co-Founder Partner Nick Judd, with equity backing from James Caan CBE and Faisal Butt. 90 North has worked with both Middle Eastern and Malaysian equity looking for socially responsible and frequently Shari’ah compliant investments across the US, UK, Continental Europe and Australia.

Sandra leads PwC’s real estate practice in the UK and has been with the UK firm for over 25 years. She has FTSE listed experience working with REITs and asset managers as well as private equity real estate and fund managers. Sandra’s clients have included U+I Group PLC, Civitas Social Housing REIT, Aviva Investors Real Assets, BlackRock Real Assets and Jupiter Fund Management PLC.

Hugh Seaborn joined Cadogan as Chief Executive in 2008. Prior to this he was Chief Executive of The Portman Estate for 9 years, where he repositioned the business as an active and committed landlord and investor. Before heading up Portman, Hugh spent 10 years with CB Richard Ellis, latterly as Director and Head of Investment Management.

Link Mortgage Services are a specialist third party servicer of mortgage loans now owned by Link Group PTY. The business employs some 190 staff servicing a range of residential, commercial and housing association loans for a number of client banks, investors and hedge funds.

Sally is one of the five founding partners at Clearbell Capital LLP, a niche real estate fund manager and advisory business with three value-add/opportunistic funds and two separate advisory mandates.

David Wood is Group Finance Director of Urban&Civic plc, an established UK property development and investment company listed on the London Stock Exchange’s main market. David joined Urban&Civic in 2010, shortly after it acquired its first asset, and helped guide the Company through a 2014 listing towards today’s market capitalisation of around £430 million.

Damian Wisniewski received a Mechanical Engineering degree at Imperial College (1983) followed by ACA (1986) at Arthur Young (now EY) in London. He then spent two years post qualification in audit and then joined Stockley Park Consortium as FC and Co Sec.

Mike Pashley is Chief Financial Officer at Trilogy Real Estate LLP, a UK real estate investment and fund manager. Prior to joining Trilogy, Mike was European Finance Director for ARES European Real Estate platform (formerly AREA Property Partners). While at AREA/ARES for over 17 years, the European team completed over 100 property investments throughout Europe and Mike and his finance team were responsible for all finance aspects of the investment, whether in funds or stand-alone investments.

Henry is responsible for the structuring of the Tritax Group funds, providing general legal counsel and overseeing compliance activities. Henry is a qualified solicitor, who completed his articles with Ashurst LLP in 2001, specialising in taxation, mergers and acquisitions.