Tell us a little bit about REECH AIM and about yourself. What is the company’s background?
Reech AIM Group is a specialist investment manager in Real Assets, with deep expertise and experience in Real Estate that I founded in 2006 following 25 years of experience in investment banking, risk management and investment management. We pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial culture. This led my firm to become a pioneer in indirect real estate investments and among the first market participants to launch an indirect real estate fund using real estate derivatives.
Which assets classes do you focus on?
Our core products and focus are in Direct and Indirect Real Estate (securities) which are managed and supported by our seasoned international team, based in the UK. But we are finding that clients don’t just want out of the box solutions so we are now creating new bespoke solutions tailored to client’s needs, be they family office or institutional investors. Our decision makers are encouraged to think outside the box, and leverage their entrepreneurial flair to find solutions to yet unsolved problems as well as to explore new challenges. The common thread in all our investment offerings is therefore a balanced mix of innovation and a strict adherence to predefined risk parameters. In our view, this results in the delivery of superior, consistent and uncorrelated risk-adjusted returns over the medium and long term.
What is your view of the real estate investment market today?
Most people are focused on the physical real estate opportunities and thinking that there are too many people, too much capital, chasing too few “good” deals. In fact I disagree with this. I think this is only an impression. To me when everybody is chasing a “good deal”, the deal becomes overheated and ends up being an “average deal” at best. So I think investors have three options to access the Real Estate Market:
- Investing in Real Estate Securities which trade, REITs, CMBS, Listed Funds and Property Derivatives, like our Iceberg Fund.
- Investing in Private Equity Real Estate Funds. Funds have the expertise to take advantage of monitoring wider opportunities, unfortunately many funds are focused on the same deals and end up competing, so selection is important. With our deep real estate expertise, we believe in being opportunistic, pragmatic and innovative.
- Investing in Physical directly. Of course, the deal flow is the main issue, but there are many interesting emerging or re-emerging regions to look at. We tend to operate in this space by leveraging the investment of our clients through club deals, assuming they like some innovative ideas.
What are you currently looking for and who should be approaching you to do business with you?
We work with, and speak to a whole range of investors who are interested in both physical and non-physical real estate investments. However we are working more and more with family offices, either because they are investing in our funds directly, or for some large ones creating a segregated mandate or participating in club deals when we have opportunities. These types of structures work well for both parties as we like to view our investors as business partners and so we can really tailor our offering and provide exceptional access to our team of experts.
