Greg Cohen and Marc Foster bolster senior team
ASK Partners has recruited two additional managing partners and moved to a new head office in London’s Great Portland Street.
Greg Cohen and Marc Foster have joined co-founders Daniel Austin and Doug King in the senior leadership team, with Austin continuing as CEO. Both will eventually become equity partners in the company.
Cohen has more than 20 years’ experience in real estate development and investment and is currently a partner at Sterlet Properties, formerly Newmark Property Consultants. He has been involved in the acquisition and development of more than 1.5 million sq ft across all use classes and in transactions with a combined sales value in excess of £500 million. His experience includes joint ventures with Argo, Investec and RBE Investments and transactions with major institutions including Derwent, Aviva and British Land.
Meanwhile, Foster’s experience is within private capital and real estate investment across both debt and equity as head of Melrose Capital, the family investment and trading business he launched in 2018. Since then, he has helped to deploy capital across a broad range of asset classes, with recent transactions including approximately 2,000 student beds across London and Manchester, life science projects in Cambridge and over 500,000 sq ft of industrial space.
Both will continue in their current roles alongside their positions at ASK.
Next step in ASK’s growth
Daniel Austin, CEO and co-founder of ASK Partners, said: “Over the past decade we have built ASK into an established real estate lending platform, deploying more than £2 billion across over 160 transactions and developing a strong network of borrowers, investors and capital partners.
“Greg and Marc joining the leadership team is an important step in the next stage of ASK’s growth. They bring complementary experience across development, investment, origination and private capital, as well as longstanding relationships across the real estate market. That strengthens our existing lending business, expands our investor network and gives us the capability to pursue selected equity opportunities where we believe we can create additional value for our investors and partners.
Greg Cohen, managing partner at ASK Partners, said: “ASK has built an exceptional debt platform and I see a significant opportunity to combine that financing expertise with principal-side investment and development experience.”
Marc Foster, managing partner at ASK Partners, said: “Having deployed capital as a family office across various levels of the capital structure over many years, the natural next step was to build a debt and equity-led business at scale. The opportunity to do that with ASK was incredibly compelling – bringing together our collective expertise, investor relationships and experience with an established infrastructure, deal flow and track record.”
