Savills IM hands fundraising and IR to a 13-year AEW veteran

Savills Investment Management has named Alex Griffiths global head of client capital, folding fundraising and investor relations into a single remit and handing it to an AEW Europe veteran. Griffiths spent almost 13 years at AEW, most recently as a managing director and head of investor relations, where she led capital raising, client relationship management, investor servicing, and marketing and communications. IREI first reported the appointment.

The hire caps a fortnight in which Savills IM reshaped the shelf it has to sell. PWD reported earlier that in early September it exited two European retail assets held for two decades, a Copenhagen landmark and a Dutch former factory. Days later, it secured Bank of Italy approval for a standalone Italian direct lending platform, with the €7.6 billion Italian equity book as the advantage behind it. Retail out, a credit strategy standing up, and now a global capital chief — less a personnel note than a distribution build.

The combined title carries its own argument, because Griffiths will run global capital raising and investor relations, own the client capital strategy, and drive growth in key international markets — putting the sales desk and the servicing desk in one job. Redemption pressure and the secondary market have become the pricing mechanism for open-end vehicles, and the executive who answers LP questions about existing funds is the same person best placed to raise the next one. The LPs already in the book are the natural buyers of whatever Savills IM launches next.

The real asset in the hire is the relationship book: thirteen years inside one European manager's investor relations function compounds into a map of institutional allocators and their consultants, along with the servicing history that shows which LPs are re-up candidates and which are exit risks. Buying that map is faster than drawing one, and Savills IM's September moves suggest a firm that now has to introduce new products to old investors — a capital formation problem before it is an investment problem.

The coverage does not say whether the lending platform has begun raising capital, or whether that capital will come from the Italian equity book's existing investors or from names new to the firm. The source of the platform's first commitments will settle what the appointment is: a retention move inside a known LP base, or the purchase of distribution into European institutions Savills IM could not reach on its own.