INDEPENDENT property consultancy firm Napier & Blakeley Managing Directors, Alastair Walker and Peter Frith, have announced the appointment of Rob Howells as their new Managing Director as part of their strategic and succession planning going forward.
In making the announcement, Managing Director and industry leader Alastair Walker said the global pandemic had given the company an opportunity to undertake a strategic review and to transition the leadership team.
“Last year when COVID took over our lives, we decided to catch up with many things that we hadn’t done because we were continuously busy. A major part of this was to look at our strategic and succession planning going forward across the group.
“After 14 years as MD of Napier & Blakeley, it’s time for a change, and so it is with great pleasure that I announce that Rob Howells will be taking over as our new MD going forward,” Walker said.
“Rob joined us in 2004 and has been National Director of our Transaction & Asset Advisory and Due Diligence group over that time, and has worked on many significant property deals for both local and international property investment clients.
“Rob is a natural change for us, as he knows N & B inside out, and he is very well known and regarded in both our domestic market and by a substantial number of global property investors operating here,” he added.
“He will be managing our strategic plan going forward and myself and Peter will be assisting Rob on his new journey and we will also remain on the N & B Board as Executive Directors.” Walker said.
Incoming Managing Director, Rob Howells said “I’m honoured and delighted to take on the role of Managing Director and thank Alastair, Peter, my fellow Directors for their confidence and continuous support.
“We’ve already achieved so much over our 36 years in business and I’m excited about our future, building on our success to date, and to be working directly on our strategic plan and all the benefits it will create for our clients, people and the industry,”
“Over many years, we’ve worked on hundreds of $billions of development and property investment projects from smaller ones to some of the largest property deals globally, managing both development and acquisition cost and risk for our clients.
“During the pandemic’s early stages, we obviously weren’t sure how things would go, but it’s a testament to our strong brand and market knowledge, that we were very busy again pretty well from April last year, and remain so now,” Howells said.
“We’ve been providing pragmatic and commercially orientated advice to local and international clients on cost and risk, since 1985, and are unique in that we have a substantial database of both commercial property assets and actual construction and development costs from our development risk work for development financiers.” Howells concluded.
The company has offices across Australia and Singapore and clients include including private equity real estate investors; family and sovereign, superannuation, pension funds; REITs; property developers, just to name a few.
