Our Team Our team has extensive experience across real estate investment, fund-management, asset-management and real estate finance.
Management Team
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Nick Spencer
Director
Since 2012 Nick has led Montane Partners’ investment activity across the UK. In the commercial market, the business has invested in retail, office, industrial and hospitality projects. In the residential space, Nick has spearheaded joint ventures that have delivered planning approvals for over 2,500 residential units in the south-east and key regional cities. More than half of these homes have been delivered or are presently under-construction.
Nick is a Chartered Surveyor, qualifying at Knight Frank in 2000 before joining Credo Property Group as a Director to co-managing their real estate funds in the UK & Europe. In 2006 he joined forces with Adam Buchler and Joanne Barnett, leading to the launch of BBS Capital.
Nick is passionate about property and holds a BSc in Land Management from the University of Reading and a MSc in Real Estate Development from MIT. He is also a co-founder and trustee of the KMMT, a charity which operates Homes-from-Home for leukaemia patients.
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Edward Hamilton
Director
Ed has 13+ years real estate experience having begun his career at Squarestone, an opportunistic real estate investment and development platform. Here he gained experience across a wide range of sectors including offices, retail and residential. In 2012 the principals of Squarestone set up HUB, a leading UK residential developer with a particular focus on the BtR space, where Ed became Head of Acquisitions and helped to build a pipeline of developments with a combined GDV in excess of £750m.
More recently, Ed worked in the Investment team at Grainger PLC where he was responsible for implementing the company’s national build to rent strategy.
Ed is involved across all of Montane’s projects, from origination and underwriting of new opportunities, asset and development management, investor relations and reporting.
Ed is an RICS accredited Chartered Surveyor and holds a BA in History and Politics from Newcastle Upon Tyne University and a MPhil in Real Estate Finance from the University of Cambridge.
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Stephen Benson
Director
Stephen, a seasoned real estate finance professional, began his career as a Chartered Surveyor. He honed his expertise over 8 years in capital markets at Knight Frank and CBRE before co-founding Rivercrown in 2004.
Over 18 years, he expanded the pan-European Investment Management business across the UK, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and Germany, focusing on distressed real estate equity and credit.
Stephen fostered partnerships with renowned institutions including Goldman Sachs, BAML, Deutsche Bank, and more.
A large part of Stephen’s time was spent in the non-performing loan space, acquiring over €5bn of loans in these partnerships predominantly in the UK and Germany. He also acquired direct assets across Europe, often in collaboration with these institutions, and spent the last 2 years restructuring distressed projects and arranging specialist stretched lending.
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Kristian Otto
Kristian has over 7 years of real estate experience, having worked in the Knight Frank Capital Market Team, where he focused on the acquisitions and disposals of trading assets on fixed leases. His expertise extends across diverse sectors, including hotels, care homes, student accommodation and car parks.
He has completed a secondment at Lloyds Banking Group in their Real Estate & Housing Team, conducting comprehensive analyses of real estate financing opportunities worth over £3 billion across various sectors.
At Montane, Kristian is involved in origination, underwriting, asset and development management, and reporting.
Kristian is a RICS-accredited Chartered Surveyor and holds a BSc from the University of Bath and an MA in Real Estate from the University of Reading.
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Advisory Board
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Adam Buchler
Non-Executive Director
Adam has 20 years of experience in the real estate finance sector. In 2003 he co-founded a boutique real estate structured finance business which later became BBS Capital. He has personally led countless complex, highly structured and high-profile advisory mandates across the capital stack.
Adam is a Chartered Accountant by background having qualified at PwC where he spent 5 years in the Corporate Finance department and he holds a First Class honours degree in Economics from the University of Manchester.
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David Church
Senior Advisor
David has 35 years of real estate experience across principal investing, equity capital markets and investment banking. As well as being head of UK REIB at Deutsche Bank, he was head of EMEA real estate investment banking division at Bank of America Merrill Lynch for 9 years.
David was involved in originating and executing many landmark transactions including the acquisition & sale of 50% of Broadgate for Blackstone; the P3 Logistics acquisition for TPG; and Centerparcs and Spire Hospital sale & leasebacks. He went on to found Leon Partners, an independent real estate advisory firm closing notable transactions for British Land, Lone Star, and Grange Hotels. Leon was sold to HFF, where David co-headed the business before it was sold to JLL.
David’s current pursuits include serving on the board of Tetrarch Homes, being an executive board member at Invel, and serving as a non-executive director at BBS Capital.
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Joanne Barnett
Non-Executive Director
Joanne has been a leader in real estate debt advisory for the last 30 years. In 2003 she co-founded a boutique real estate structured finance business which later became BBS Capital.
She has experience arranging finance across all property sectors, including wide ranging residential and commercial investment and development in the UK and Western Europe.
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