Partners Group has added two more senior leaders to its growing real estate team, PERE can reveal. Stephen McCall has been hired into a new role of global head of platforms and opcos, and Henrik Orrbeck will assume the role of co-head of real estate Europe.
Last week, the firm announced that Karim Habra will be joining in March as global co-head of real estate from Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate investment arm of Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, where he was head of Europe and Asia-Pacific and global head of strategic partnerships. Habra will be based in Partners Group’s headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, and will sit alongside Mike Bryant, the firm’s existing global head of real estate.
From February, McCall will assume responsibility for investing in real estate management teams and operating companies globally on behalf of Partners Group. He joins from Edyn Group, a London-based hybrid hospitality platform owned by Brookfield since 2018, where he was chief executive officer. Prior to that he spent 17 years at UK-headquartered hospitality group IHG, most recently as chief operating officer for Europe. According to a post on his LinkedIn, McCall stepped down as CEO at Edyn late last year.
Orrbeck, who will be based in London when he joins the firm in March, will sit alongside AJ Jager, who has served as a managing director in the real estate team since 2021. Orrbeck joins from EQT Exeter, the real estate business of Swedish private equity firm EQT, where he was a partner in the firm’s Stockholm office since 2015. In that time he raised two funds and built a European team investing in direct assets, operating partners and public companies. Prior to that he worked for US manager The Carlyle Group for almost 10 years, most recently as director for the Nordics.
According to Bryant, all three hires in aggregate reflect the evolution of the firm’s direct real estate strategy as it looks to focus on acquiring platforms and operating businesses across all global regions in which it operates.
“When we look forward to the next 10 years, we see a market where value creation is going to have to underpin return, and good investors are going to have to work very hard to meet the needs of occupiers and tenants,” he told PERE. “For us to meet that opportunity, we need to bring in talent to help us address the operational intensity of the assets we invest in.”
The experience accrued by the firm’s three new hires in investing in operating companies and management teams will help the firm gain exposure to the full value chain in real estate, from sourcing to managing to exiting, he added.
“Where historically we may have done a discrete joint venture with an operating partner, and then may have transitioned to a programmatic joint venture, going forward we will be moving into the next stage by taking minority stakes in operators to further that alignment and get exposure to the full value chain,” Bryant explained.
The creation of McCall’s role is a reflection of this altered strategy. “It is a role that did not exist previously, but we have such conviction on this strategy we wanted to bring someone in to help us drive and execute on that,” said Bryant.
“This strategy is something we’ve had on our mind for a while. What’s happened in the economic environment has just strengthened our conviction that now is the right time to push into this opportunity,” he added.
Bryant said the firm remains an active investor in real estate secondaries. “We apply the same thematic lens to understanding sectors as to assessing the qualities of operators and managers,” he said. “Ultimately it’s the same market we’re investing into, and our perspectives overarch whether we’re investing directly or indirectly on behalf of our clients.”
While responsibility for the firm’s global real estate strategy will now be shared between Bryant and Habra, Bryant said this is recreating a structure that previously existed, whereby management of the real estate business was shared between Bryant and chairman Marc Weiss until the end of 2022. Weiss, based in New York, remains on the investment committee and continues to spend time with clients, but is not involved in day-to-day business management, according to Bryant.
Similarly, Bryant said responsibility for Europe real estate was previously shared between Jager and himself, whereas Jager and Orrbeck will now be the two co-heads.
Until November 2023, the firm’s real estate Europe head was Rahul Ghai, who relocated from Singapore to London in 2021 having previously served as the firm’s Asia real estate head. As reported by PERE, Ghai left Partners Group to become a managing director in Singapore for Australian firm Salter Brothers. PERE understands Jager played an active role in Partners Group’s regional leadership as managing director prior to his elevation to co-head of Europe at the start of this year.
Bryant said there are no plans to make further senior real estate hires at present.
Partners Group manages $17 billion in real estate assets, and ranks 53rd in the PERE 100 league table of the largest real estate managers by capital raised over the past five years.
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