Allianz Real Estate, the property arm of the German insurance giant, has appointed Megan Walters as global head of research.
Joining Allianz Real Estate as of November 1, Walters will report to chief investment officer Olivier Teran, and will initially be based in the firm’s Singapore office before relocating her family to Europe.
With over 20 years of experience in global real estate, Walters joins from JLL Asia Pacific, where she was a member of the JLL Global Research executive team and held the position of head of research Asia Pacific.
'2019 has been an active year for Allianz Real Estate – both from an investment perspective and in the way that we are developing our business,' said Francois Trausch, CEO Allianz Real Estate.
'We recently announced our assets under management had reached EUR67.1 bn, and we have achieved the first milestones of our third-party ambitions,' Trausch added. 'This was achieved through launching our European Debt fund and announcing the first equity deal in which we have acquired and will manage an asset on behalf of a joint venture including a third-party institutional investor wishing to invest alongside Allianz.'
Allianz Real Estate has opened three new offices this year to support this growth, Trausch added, bringing its total to 21, alongside making key hires.
These have included Kari Pitkin as head of business development for Europe, Shripal Shah as head of debt origination in London, and Jenny Lindholm as director Nordics in Stockholm.
'The sophisticated nature of our clients mean that we are in a strong position to add new strategies each year. Our growth comes from those new strategies – be that new geographies, asset classes or ways of investing,' noted Teran.
'The breadth of strategies that we are now overseeing, alongside our move to managing real estate for third parties, requires us to structure our research team as a global department and I am pleased to welcome Megan as head of the global team,' Teran concluded.