Property Appointments: Rapleys; St. Modwen; Eversheds Sutherland

Balvinder Sagoo and Alfred Bartlett, both Rapleys

Rapleys has continued its expansion in the Midlands with the appointment of a new partner to establish and lead the building consultancy team in Birmingham.

Balvinder Sagoo joins from GVA where he spent 11 years, the last five as a director. He has more than 17 years’ commercial building surveying experience in the Midlands, with key clients at GVA including Aviva, ABB, Canada Life and CBRE Global Investors.

He said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to join a progressive partnership with an established national team but with the remit to develop our building surveying business in the Midlands.

“My focus will be to complement our existing transactional and professional functions, more specifically refurbishment, fit out, dilapidations and technical due diligence. We will also be offering project management and cost consultancy, alongside traditional building surveying services.”

Rapleys established its Birmingham office last year with a retail and leisure agency and development team, and is targeting further growth.

Birmingham head of office, Alfred Bartlett, said: “Our ambition is to grow the Rapleys offer in Birmingham to cover the full range of services to developer, investor, landlord and occupier clients. Balvinder’s appointment is part of the ongoing strategy to fulfill this objective.”

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Chris Newsome, development director, St. Modwen

St. Modwen has made two key appointments to its head office team in Longbridge.

Chris Newsome joins as Development Director following nine years away from the company in which he worked on the delivery of a number of high-profile development projects across the UK, including retail sites in Cheshire and Lincolnshire.

He will be responsible for developing key sites in the Midlands and North Staffordshire region and will adopt a lead role in the continued expansion of Longbridge, following the work led by former Development Director Mike Murray.

Matthew Timmins joins the business as Assistant Construction Manager following six years at Atkins, where he worked for both the public and private sectors on the regeneration of brownfield sites across the UK, including the former Llanwern Steelworks in Newport and Swansea University Bay Campus, both owned by St. Modwen.

Stephen Prosser, Regional Director at St. Modwen, said: “Chris has an excellent track record in managing high profile development sites across the country and we are very pleased to add his expertise to our team. He will be working on a range of our developments across the region and play a key role in continuing the commercial and residential development at Longbridge.”

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Mark Chester

Law firm Eversheds Sutherland has strengthened its international Tech and Real Estate teams with the appointment of a new partner.

Mark Chester, a specialist in alternative assets with over 25 years of experience, has joined the business after 17 years with Gowling WLG.

Prior to Gowling, Mr Chester was at Linklaters for five years and Berwin Leighton Paisner for three years.

He is a real estate lawyer specialising in alternative assets, and in particular, real estate-backed operating businesses, primarily in the technology, pharmaceuticals and education sectors. He is internationally known for his work in the data centres sector.

Over the last 12 months, he has advised on three of the UK’s largest data centre transactions for the UK subsidiary of a large US cable telecommunications company.

David Watkins, Co-Head of Global Real Estate and Planning at Eversheds Sutherland, said: “Mark will be a great asset to the team as he is very well regarded across real estate and the data centre/tech sector. Data centres are a key strategic area for Eversheds Sutherland, with strong expertise within our leading TMT sector across EMEA, Asia and the US.

“Having headed up Gowling WLG’s data centres team, with a strong reputation acting for developers, investors, operators, service providers, subcontractors and end-users in relation to all aspects of data centres, he will be an important hire for the firm and an asset to our clients.”

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