Heitman hires from Apollo

Heitman, the Chicago-based firm, has bolstered the ranks in Europe by hiring a former Apollo Global Real Estate professional.

Erik Rijnoudt has joined as senior vice president of portfolio management in the firm’s London office having been responsible for Apollo’s €1 billion western European portfolio of core and value added assets.

Prior to joining Apollo, he worked as a fund asset manager at AXA Real Estate and as an associate director at AEW Europe, formerly known as Curzon Global Partners.

As well as announcing its latest hire, the company also said David Brodersen had been promoted and would relocate to the firm’s Warsaw office as a senior vice president to take greater responsibility for portfolio management.

Heitman has been making hires in Europe as it looks to grow its platform, though it has also had to replace a key professional. In September last year it announced Scott Dwyer had been recruited as head of portfolio management for the investment manager’s European private equity real estate business reporting to European co-heads Gordon Black and Rob Reiskin. Dwyer replaced former European portfolio head Otis Spencer, who left the firm earlier last year and is now co-head of Warsaw-based KSP Real Estate Investment Management, a CEE-focused fund manager that launched in June.

Nevertheless, it has been busy on the acquisitions front. One of the most recent deals by the company in Europe was for a Warsaw office park in Poland for €116 million. It bought Marynarska Business Park on behalf of its €505 million European value-added fund, Heitman European Property Partners IV. Launched in 2008, HEPP IV is entering its final stages of deploying capital across Central and Eastern Europe.

A month previous to the Warsaw deal, Heitman purchased a 75 percent stake in a 3,000-unit German residential portfolio from UK public company Grainger, the UK’s largest listed residential owner and manager. Heitman bought its stake in the portfolio, valued at roughly €220 million, on behalf of a global institutional investor reported to be the National Pension Service of Korea.