Nuveen’s APAC real estate head Reilly departs – Exclusive

Nick Evans, head of Australia, will assume interim leadership of Nuveen Real Estate's Asia-Pacific platform.

Chris Reilly, managing director for Asia-Pacific at global investment manager Nuveen Real Estate has left, ending a decades-long stint at the firm.

A Nuveen Real Estate spokesperson confirmed Reilly’s July departure, to “spend more time with his family and pursue other interests and opportunities”.

Nick Evans, head of Australia at Nuveen Real Estate, will take up interim leadership of the Asia-Pacific platform. Carsten Kebbedies, head of the firm’s product and solutions group in Asia-Pacific, will manage Reilly’s regulatory responsibilities for Singapore.

Reilly began his association with what would become Nuveen Real Estate in 1997, when he joined the London real estate manager Henderson Global Investors as a direct UK property fund manager. In 2001, he moved to Singapore to specialize in property stocks and trusts in Asia-Pacific, according to the firm’s website.

Reilly was appointed to head the firm’s Asia business in 2005. In 2014, he took on the regional leadership role at the-then TH Real Estate (now Nuveen Real Estate), which was formed as a joint venture between Henderson and TIAA-CREF, and continued to steer the business after TIAA acquired Henderson’s 40 percent stake in 2015.

Asia-Pacific has grown to become an important part of Nuveen Real Estate’s global portfolio, especially as the firm expands its third-party management capabilities. In a late 2018 interview with PERE, Reilly spoke of ambitious plans to increase its assets in the region under management to $9 billion in the next five years, nearly tripling its exposure. Last year, the firm also launched its first real estate fund in the region – an open-end core vehicle with an initial target size of over $2 billion after the first five years. Louise Kavanagh, who joined the firm in 2017, is the fund manager for the Asia Pacific Cities Fund.

PERE understands that the Asia Pacific Cities Fund did not have a key man clause. As such, Reilly’s departure has not triggered any key man provision or impacted the fund’s operations in any way.

Nuveen Real Estate had $125 billion in assets under management globally as of June 2019.