CROMWELL PROPERTY GROUP Rob Percy officially joined Cromwell in 2012, but he has played a central role in its most important transactions for nearly a decade.
Born and raised just outside Glasgow in Scotland, Rob graduated with a Masters in Science (specialising in Chemical Physics) from the University of Glasgow, before embarking on a career in investment banking, starting with the venerable N M Rothschild & Sons in London.
Rob moved to Brisbane in 2004 and took up a corporate advisory job with South African-based investment bank, Investec. It wasn't long before he found himself taking a key role in advising Cromwell on its landmark merger and stapling transaction.
"We wrapped that up in December 2006 but I stayed in touch with Paul (Weightman) and Daryl (Wilson). Even though I had moved to Sydney, we worked together again on the initial Redefine investment in 2009" he said.
The Redefine investment represented Cromwell's second major transaction where, in 2009, the Board decided to bring on a strategic investor to assist in promoting future growth of the business. A number of different parties were considered, with Redefine being the best fit, both culturally and strategically. Redefine has since gone on to be one of Cromwell's biggest supporters and, with two directors on the Board, provides a significant contribution to Cromwell.
In 2012, Cromwell established its Sydney office and this created an opportunity to bring Rob into the business to drive transaction opportunities.
"Paul convinced me to join the team full time… it's a great business and a great team so I didn't take much convincing."
As Associate Director of Transactions, Rob now heads up a team within Cromwell. He works closely with the Board and senior management across a range of transactions, most recently the $208 million acquisition of Valad Europe*.
"After a couple of years working on mainly large asset-based transactions, like the acquisition of Northpoint Tower and the NSW Government Property Portfolio, it has been great to brush off my investment banking skills of buying and selling businesses."
"They are often quite different deals to work on so the variation keeps it exciting."
One of the most important factors in Rob's decision to join Cromwell was his experience with and admiration for the Group's strict due diligence processes.
"Cromwell never makes a rash decision and that takes a lot of the risk out of any transaction," he said.
"The first question we ask is: do we need this strategically? If the answer is 'yes', then we move into the detailed due diligence to find out whether this is the right deal."
He said the Valad Europe transaction was an excellent example of Cromwell's ability to see value where others can't.
"The existing Valad Europe Executive Chairman and Managing Director are both Australian born and have significant experience working with Australian real estate businesses. They have a very Australian philosophy about how they work which made it easy for us to understand the opportunity and the fit with Cromwell" he said. "A lot of what they do and how they do it mimics what we do in terms of the in-depth formal process and in-house management. It gives us confidence that, while they are on the other side of the world, we can see some strong synergies."
"In simple terms, we have chosen a team of people who have great potential to grow a business, much the same as we did with Phoenix Portfolios in property securities and Oyster as a direct property fund manager in New Zealand."
What does the future hold for Rob and the Transactions team?
"We are always looking at new opportunities," he said.
"The Valad Europe transaction moves us to about a 14% contribution to earnings from funds management and our strategy is to get that closer to 20% over the medium to long term ... but it will depend on what comes up."
"In terms of the balance sheet portfolio, we will continue to be focused on what value can be extracted from existing assets. Buying new assets is getting increasingly more difficult because pricing in the market doesn't often reflect the underlying risk."
*The Valad Europe transaction is subject to regulatory approval.
Major contributions to Cromwell's growthDate | Transaction |
January 2015 |
Valad Europe acquisition (145 million) and |
Ongoing 2014 | Northpoint Development Application and stakeholder relations |
June 2014 | 50% investment in Oyster Property Group |
December 2013 | Northpoint Tower acquisition and investment structuring ($279 million) |
Ongoing 2013 | Managing Redefine's investment into Bondi residential development project |
May 2013 | NSW Government Property Portfolio acquisition ($405 million) and Cromwell capital raising |
January 2012 | Rob joined Cromwell full-time as Associate Director |
Late 2009 | Rob was lead corporate advisor for Redefine's strategic investment in Cromwell |
December 2006 | Working for Investec, Rob was lead corporate advisor to Cromwell for the merger of the Cromwell Diversified Property Trust with five smaller unlisted property trusts and stapling it to Cromwell Corporation Limited creating Cromwell Property Group. |
|
distributed by
|
