New In The Job

…in property finance.

What’s the appointment? Andrew Carswell has been appointed a director at Christchurch-based investment bank Murray + Co, heading its new property advisory division.

What was he doing before this appointment? Where do you want me to start?

I believe a guitar-strumming songstress once advised “the very beginning” as a good place. Alright then: Mr Carswell says he decided fairly early on he wanted to be a chartered surveyor. He has two university degrees: a BSc in urban land administration from the UK’s Portsmouth Polytechnic, and an MBA from Manchester Business School, which he added a few years later when he decided he wanted to move past valuation-type work.

What was his first job? In 1989, he went into a graduate training programme with Hillier Parker (now CB Richard Ellis) designed to transition degree-course graduates into chartered surveying. He says his first couple of years there were spent in a range of tasks: valuations, rent reviews, giving development advice, and more.

It was a good time, 1989. Yes and no…Mr Carswell says when he joined Hillier Parker, it was the tail end of the 80s boom. “And for about six or eight months, everyone was real go go, money no object, and then suddenly the brakes went on. It was a completely different environment. I was moved into office agency, and it was a very challenging job to let offices in effectively the pit of quite a severe recession.”

I bet it was. So what did he do after that? Over the next three or four years he worked his way up and ended up running a team of four in Scotland, responsible for doing rent reviews and valuations “north of the border”, as he puts it. “Hadrian’s Wall was the demarcation.” Subsequent jobs included roles at Commerzbank AG in London – German’s second largest bank after Deutsche Bank – where a steep learning curve included increased responsibility and some “fairly chunky deals” after his boss “effectively” left, and a role at HSBC’s investment bank as a director in the structured real estate finance team.

Hang-on - how chunky is “fairly chunky”? In 2002, a large Pan-European facility for a US investment firm, worth about €500 million, and across 9 European jurisdictions. He was also a key relationship manager for Commerzbank for major UK property corporates. With HSBC, he structured and executed deals worth between £10 million and £300 million – later moving more into loan recovery work and lecturing on real estate finance at a management college after markets grew challenging in mid-2007.

And how did his education link up to where he is now? Well, he says his MBA enabled him to move more into the property finance sector – starting with a role at Commerzbank in its new London property finance team. “I think they saw me as someone who had no actual banking experience at the time, but who had an interesting combination of property skills and a business education, having just completed that MBA.” He said there is a feeling in the UK that it is easier to train property people to become bankers than the other way around.

Why property? Mr Carswell said property’s cyclical nature made it both challenging and interesting. “I think the financing aspects of property particularly can be quite challenging, just because of that cyclicality. There’s an awful lot about timing, and understanding where the risks are in a transaction. On an intellectual level, I find it very interesting.”

A little like crosswords. A little. Slightly higher stakes – unless your taste runs to an unusual brand of crossword.

And, er, why Christchurch? In part due to seeking work-life balance, in part due to a Kiwi wife. He says working in Christchurch is “fairly full-on” but one advantage is the absence of an hour-long commute bookending the working day.

Any other reasons? The weather, according to Mr Carswell. “I suggested to my wife we should move to Scotland and she said, “ ‘no, it’s too cold up there.’ ”