Lehman Brothers recruits

Lehman Brothers has made two senior appointments to its European real estate private equity group. Gerald Parkes is joining as managing director and head of the group and Mark Newman, a managing director of Lehman Brothers, is appointed to the newly created position of chief investment officer (CIO) for the global real estate business.

Gerald Parkes joins from Invesco Real Estate Ltd, where he was chief executive responsible for Invesco’s real estate investment management and advisory business in Europe. He will report to Raymond Mikulich and Mark Walsh, global heads of real estate private equity. He will formally join the group in September.

Parkes has over 25 years’ experience in real estate in the US and Europe. Prior to Invesco, he founded Parkes and Company in 1996. He sold that business to Invesco in 2001. Prior to that, he was head of European investment management services for Lend Lease, was a founding partner of The Yarmouth Group, a real estate investment management firm that was sold to Lend Lease and was a partner in Richard Ellis’ US investment management business. He is a chartered surveyor, was European chairman of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) from 1998 to 2002 and is currently a trustee of the ULI and a member of its global executive committee.

In his new position Mark Newman will oversee the investment process for Lehman Brothers’ global real estate private equity investment activities. Newman has been with Lehman Brothers since 2000 and will leave his responsibilities as head of the European activities of the group to assume his new role of CIO. He has over 15 years’ experience as a principal in the real estate business in both North America and Europe. During his tenure he was responsible for several significant investments made by the group, including the purchase of the Swisscom portfolio in a joint venture with PSP Swiss Property, the purchase and delisting of Uni-invest, a Dutch property company, and the acquisition of Tornet, the third largest listed property company in Sweden, in a joint venture with Ratos AB. He will continue to report to Raymond Mikulich and Mark Walsh.