Doughty Hanson expands real estate team

Doughty Hanson Real Estate appointed Douglas Edwards as a principal and member of its management committee. Based in London, he will work closely with John Howard, head of Doughty Hanson & Co Real Estate.

Edwards’ prime responsibility will be to support Howard in furthering the overall investment strategy of Doughty Hanson & Co European Real Estate Fund II, as well as originating transactions across the fund’s target investment markets.

This is the second recent senior appointment. Doughty Hanson appointed Lahlou Khelifi to develop its real estate activities in France in March.

The appointments come ahead of the launch of Doughty Hanson’s new real estate fund, Doughty Hanson & Co European Real Estate Fund II, later this year.

Douglas has more than 19 years’ experience in the real estate sector, most recently as director and principal of AXA REIM’s Real Estate Private Equity Fund. Before that, he was a director of RoProperty Venture Capital, the real estate private equity group of Rodamco.

Doughty Hanson & Co European Real Estate Fund I was established in 1999 and has made seven realisations to date. Investors in Doughty Hanson & Co Real Estate have received cumulative distributions of about US$190m, representing an overall realised return of 3x on the fund’s cash investment and a gross realised IRR of 49%.

The fund comprises equity commitments in excess of US$630m from institutional investors and, to date, has made investments totalling over €1.5bn. The real estate team operates across Doughty Hanson’s European office network.