People: Director appointment at Reward Finance; Property firm welcomes four recruits; and more

Leeds-based alternative finance provider Reward Finance Group has appointed Gemma Wright as commercial director.

Wright has spent more than 17 years with RBS where she became a director of invoice finance with responsibility for leading a sales and client relations team in the North region.

She joins Reward Finance Group at an exciting time for the company having celebrated its fifth successive year of growth, with income for the year ended February 2017 increasing to £7.6m and the loan book growing by 25% on the previous year.

In September it has also received a £40m investment from Foresight Group, which has doubled the amount of funds available for the company to lend to SMEs.

Wright said: “I am delighted to be joining Reward at such an exciting time in their growth and looking forward to working with the existing directors to drive the business in the latest stage of its development. Reward is making waves in the alternative business finance market through its fast, flexible and innovative solutions for the SME market and I am really pleased to be part of such a successful and forward-thinking business.”

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Cushman & Wakefield has made four new appointments to its Leeds office.

Jacques Esterhuizen joins the office as an associate from CBRE. He joins the investment team having spent three years with CBRE where he covered the North East industrial market. Prior to this he spent three years within DTZ’s industrial agency team before its merger with Cushman & Wakefield. In his new role he will be working alongside Tim Cameron-Jones (partner) and Richard Brooke (associate).

Rob Garraghan joins the office as a consultant in the public sector advisory team. He recently graduated with a first-class honours in building surveying and previously worked at Plymouth University. In his new role he will be involved in the procurement of student accommodation for university clients, as well as providing consultancy advice to public sector organisations such as local authorities and government bodies.

Andrew Malloy joins the project management and consultancy team as a building surveyor from Faithful + Gould in Nottingham. He has experience in design and specification, contract administration, project management and condition surveys and will be working with a range of public and private sector clients in his new role.

Edward Barker joins as a cost consultant. An economics graduate from Newcastle University, he will be part of the cost consultancy team and is currently undertaking an MSc in quantity surveying.

Keith Hardman, partner and head of Cushman & Wakefield’s Leeds office said: “I am pleased to welcome Jacques, Rob, Andrew and Edward to the office. Our team in Leeds services a range of private and public sector clients across Yorkshire and further afield and their expertise and experience will be enable us to provide them with a market leading service offering.”

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Business travel management company Redfern, part of CTM group, has further strengthened its account management team with the addition of a new account manager.

Heidi Rowan joins Redfern after a six years with Virgin Trains East Coast and brings with her more than 10 years of account management experience to the Bradford-based company.

The appointment follows the successful award of a number of new corporate accounts such as road repair machinery manufacturer Archway Products.

Rowan said: “I have joined Redfern at a very exciting time and I am very much looking forward to helping build on our success and adding value to the highly successful account management function.

“I am responsible for managing the new corporate customers who have chosen to work with Redfern and I am making it my priority to ensure that by working with both the Sales team and our Business Support team, that implementation runs smoothly, and training of our award winning online booking tool, tRIPs is delivered efficiently.”

Redfern books more than 12,000 rail tickets a day for more than 500 customers and provides end to end travel services to major government departments and the public sector as well as a diverse portfolio of private sector firms.