Cordea Savills makes three hires in Italy

European property fund manager Cordea Savills has made three senior level hires for its Milan office, which it opened in 2005.

London-based Cordea Savills has made three new hires in its Milan office. In the first, Alessandro Castiglione has been hired as the director of investment. Castiglione will have overall responsibility for asset management of the firm’s Italian portfolios. He graduated in engineering and obtained an MBA from Milan’s Luigi Bocconi University. Prior Before to joining Cordea Savills, he worked for BNL Fondi Immobiliari, Deutsche Bank Real Estate and Unieuro SpA, where he was in charge of asset and property management.

Pierfilippo Barattolo is the second hire, responsible for pan-European investment on behalf of Italian clients. Before moving to Cordea Savills, Barattolo was investment director at DTZ, BNL Fondi Immobiliari and Nextra Investment Management, where he worked on Italy’s first ever pan-European fund.

The third hire is Giuseppina La Mantia, who will become an asset manager for the firm. Cordea Savills set up shop in Italy in 2004 through the opening of an office in Rome. A year later, it relocted to Milan. The team currently consists of 15 members managing Cordea Savills activities ranging from core to opportunistic strategies. 

In June the firm launched Italian Opportunities II following on from the firm’s first Italian opportunities venture which was launched in July 2006. The follow-up fund, which is targeting net annual returns of 20 percent a year, is to concentrate on the same strategy of acquiring single assets and portfolios through its Milan office. The firm says it is hoping to raise more than €300 million for the second fund. That compares with €200 million target the firm had for the first fund.Â