Cadillac Fairview poaches Oxford Properties exec

Cadillac Fairview, the real estate subsidiary of Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, has made another senior hire for its 18-month-old European platform.

Christopher Lankin will join the organization’s London-based team next week as a managing director, focusing on investments in the region. He will be one of three managing directors leading the European business, along with Jenny Hammarlund, who is head of Europe, and Graham Tyler, who is in charge of asset management. Tyler joined Cadillac Fairview in April after four years at London-based real estate investment manager Tristan Capital Partners, where he was managing director of investments.

Lankin previously was general counsel at Oxford Properties Group, the real estate subsidiary of fellow Canadian pension Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. Based in New York, he was a member of Oxford’s US senior management team and was responsible for the execution of Oxford’s investment and development platform in the US and globally, according to his LinkedIn profile. Over his eight years with the investor, he helped to expand Oxford’s US business from approximately $3 billion to $27 billion.

Prior to Oxford, Lankin was a partner at law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg’s New York office, where he advised clients on a range of real estate acquisitions and dispositions, as well as negotiating and structuring joint ventures and operating arrangements.

Also joining Cadillac Fairview’s London office next week is Julian Neave, who has been hired as a director. Neave was formerly a partner at UK real estate firm Quadrant, where he led the office investment and development team and was in charge of sourcing and executing investment opportunities.

The new hires will bring Cadillac Fairview’s European headcount to 15, just a year and a half after launching the regional business with the appointment of Hammarlund in March 2021. Hammarlund previously worked at private equity firms HIG Capital and KKR, where she was managing director and director, respectively. She also held roles with alternative investment firm Värde Partners and now-defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Cadillac Fairview has committed approximately $4 billion of new capital to invest across Europe over the past 18 months, as part of a larger global expansion plan. At the time of Hammarlund’s hire, the investor had only one European asset, White City Place, a mixed-use London office development acquired in October 2020. Since then, Cadillac Fairview has added other significant investments in the region, including a joint venture with UK partner Stanhope and Thomas White Oxford, the development company of St John’s College Oxford, to develop Oxford North, a life-sciences-focused mixed-use innovation district near the University of Oxford .

Additionally, Cadillac Fairview has invested in a UK build-to-rent platform with London-based real estate manager Long Harbour and Canada’s PSP Investments. It has also formed a joint venture with Boreal, a pan-European real estate investment management firm, to acquire €3 billion of logistics properties across Europe.

The investor manages more than $35 billion in assets across the Americas and the UK, with further growth planned in Europe and Asia.