JLL adds three to Asia corporate finance team

The rebuilding of Jones Lang LaSalle’s (JLL) corporate finance team in Asia after former leader Nick Crockett and part of his team defected to rival firm CBRE last year has continued with the hire of three new executives.

Ryan Levine joins as director, and brings six years of real estate experience from BNP Paribas Hong Kong, Lehman Brothers and most recently Barclays Bank.  Levine will focus on providing a range of capital raising, M&A and joint venture advisory services to the firm’s clients across Greater China from out of JLL’s Hong Kong office.

Bastian Van Halder joins as an associate director at JLL from Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) Corporate Finance in London. He will be based in the Singapore office, and use his past experience in managing real estate funds, equity raising, debt origination and club and joint venture structuring in his new role.

The third addition to the JLL corporate finance ranks is Andrew Wilson, who joins from JP Morgan.  Wilson, who also previously worked for ING Real Estate Investment Management, brings eight years of experience in Australia and the UK to JLL. He will be working out of the Sydney office to offer the firm’s clients industry analysis and consultancy.

In addition, JLL’s Korean Capital Markets team specialist Seijan An has been moved internally to focus solely on Corporate Finance in Korea. 

The battle between the two real estate property services giants JLL and CBRE came to a head in March this year, when CBRE poached five members of JLL’s Asian corporate finance team. The exodus was led by Nick Crockett and he brought along four other members of his team: senior directors Chris Chiang and John Willis and directors Canon Yau and Toby Daniel, bringing CBRE Capital Advisors’ team to six strong.

Just after losing Crockett and his team, JLL’s corporate finance team was reduced to five, but the firm announced two new hires right after Crockett left. Chris Key joined from Macquarie Capital as head of corporate finance in Australia and director Kivanch Mehmet joined from National Australia Bank.

Operating in 70 countries worldwide, JLL provides management and real estate outsourcing services to a property portfolio of 2.6 billion square feet and completed $63 billion in sales, acquisitions and finance transactions in 2012. Its investment management business, LaSalle Investment Management, has $46.3 billion of real estate assets under management.