William Bobie

Biography

William is Chartered Surveyor with over 20 years’ experience in real estate investment management and development of large-scale commercial projects. William’s expertise is in commercial real estate asset management and development. He is currently an ardent champion for the creation of real estate funds in West Africa to complement existing asset classes such as equities and fixed income products.

William commenced his commercial real estate investment management career in 1999 with Royal & Sun Alliance Property Investment Ltd in the UK as an asset manager responsible for portfolio strategy and management of a £200m unitised pension fund. From 2003-2004, William joined ISIS Asset Management plc (now F&C) following the merger of Royal and Sun Alliance and Friends Ivory Sime. He continued in his role as portfolio manager responsible for a sector portfolio of industrial and distribution warehouses spread across the UK with a portfolio value of £500m.

In June 2004 William joined AXA Real Estate Investment Managers as a portfolio manager to assist with the growth of a unitised life fund. William was instrumental in the growth of the life fund from £298m to £1.4b from 2004 to 2008. His responsibilities included deal origination and execution, active asset management of the standing investment, development, asset and portfolio strategy and undertaking presentation to investors. He gained a significant exposure doing deals across the traditional real estate sectors to include offices, high street retail, retail warehouses, industrial and distribution warehouses across the UK.

He also executed many transactions in the non-traditional sectors such as hotels, leisure facilities, car motor showrooms and petrol filling stations. His experience doing these deals included negotiating and structuring development funding and joint venture agreements, undertaking direct developments, sale and lease backs transactions and negotiating complex real estate contracts on behalf of the fund.

In November 2008 William joined the Honeywell Group Nigeria as the Chief Executive Officer of their real estate business (Uraga Real Estate). At Uraga William restructured the real estate business and was instrumental in the completion of the 5 Star Radisson Blu Anchorage Hotel in Lagos and initiated a completed Honeywell Group Nigeria’s head office in Ikoyi. He completed many land transactions and initiated development projects in Abuja and Lagos. William is currently leading the optimisation of the Volta River Authority Real Estate portfolio, he also sits as one of the 3 independent members of the Investment Committee of the $200m UPDC Real Estate Investment Trust, Nigeria.