M&G rehires Duncan Batty to lead real estate finance arm with £14bn-plus deployed

M&G has appointed Duncan Batty as head of real estate finance, returning a 12-year veteran of the business to run a platform that has deployed more than £14bn across Europe since it launched in 2009. Batty spent his earlier M&G years latterly as co-head of real estate finance, and joins from Revolut, where he was head of commercial real estate lending. He reports to Martin Towns, global head of M&G Real Estate.

The business he takes over has deployed capital on behalf of 100 institutional investors, and sits inside a wider M&G Real Estate platform that invests across sectors and the risk spectrum through equity and debt strategies in the UK, European and Asia-Pacific property markets.

Batty called the moment an important point in the market cycle. Banks have retrenched from parts of the market, he said, and a significant refinancing requirement is coming through, leaving an opening for experienced alternative lenders to supply the capital borrowers need while giving institutional clients what he described as attractive risk-adjusted returns. It is the standard pitch for property debt, and it is a testable one: European commercial property maturities either convert into drawn loans or get refinanced by banks that never fully left the sector.

Towns cited Batty's real estate credit expertise, his longstanding client relationships and his valuable external experience, calling him exceptionally well placed to lead the business.

Real estate finance runs on a different calendar from sponsor LBO work, its deal flow set by maturities and loan-to-value resets rather than auction timetables, which puts the shape of European property refinancing over the next few quarters at the centre of this desk's pipeline. Alternative Credit Investor, which reported the appointment, also flagged Pemberton's hire of Investcorp's Courtman to lead its CLO arm — another senior credit seat filled elsewhere in the market.