George Agethen Promoted to Co-Head of APAC at Ivanhoe Cambridge

Quebec pension fund manager Ivanhoe Cambridge is reorganising its global operations and the make-over includes an upgrade for the firm’s top executive in the Asia Pacific.

George Agethen, who has served as a senior vice president for the division of Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec since joining Ivanhoe Cambridge in 2015 has now been named co-head of Asia Pacific, and will share responsibilities for the organisation’s operations in the region with Paris-based Karim Habra who also heads Ivanhoe’s European business.

“We have opted for a geographical structure with the creation of five regional hubs: United States and Latin America; Canada; Quebec; Europe; and Asia-Pacific,” said Ivanhoe Cambridge president and chief executive Nathalie Palladitcheff in a statement. “This structure will allow for greater flexibility, modularity and compounded synergy in the management of our portfolio construction and investment strategies.”

Ivanhoe Cambridge, which had $47.9 billion in assets under management globally as of 2020, has been one of the most prolific investors in Asia Pacific real estate strategies, including announcing last month that it is joining Allianz Real Estate in a $2 billion fund focused on Japanese multi-family opportunities.

New Challenges

‘What a great challenge to start 2022, to grow and learn within this role and continue to increase the impact of our strategy in Asia-Pacific,” Agethen said in comments on LinkedIn.com. The upgrade adds to a year of changes for the University of New South Wales graduate, including a move last year to Singapore from his previous base in Hong Kong.

In addition to the shift southward, Agethen has also welcomed a number of new additions to his team in the past year, including welcoming former Alpha Investment Partners executive Josephine Yip to Ivanhoe Cambridge’s Singapore office as director of investment and asset management for Asia Pacific in September.

Under Ivanhoe Cambridge’s revised scheme, Agethen and his growing team will assume greater responsibility for the entire value-creation chain related to the properties in their portfolios and will elevate their asset management approach accordingly, Palladitcheff said in announcing the plan.

Explaining the reorganisation as part of a structural evolution for Ivanhoe Cambridge, Palladitcheff said that the firm’s regional offices will be in charge of selecting direct, indirect or fund strategies for each investment as the group also introduced a new head of Canada role and appointed Michele Hubert as its chief operating officer overseeing global operations. Hubert’s promotion comes just seven months after the four year company veteran had been bumped up to vice president of research, strategy and transformation.

Ivanhoe Cambridge’s reorganisation was announced on the same day that the Quebec group’s Ontario-based rivals at Oxford Properties introduced a new head of Asia Pacific, with former Blackstone executive Alessandro Fiascaris joining the pension fund manager as senior vice president for Asia Pacific based in Singapore.

Regional Impact

Since Agethen joined Ivanhoe Cambridge from Ping An in 2015, the organisation has backed some of the region’s best-known real estate strategies and platforms, including being one of the earliest investors in industrial specialist Logos, which last week became part of ESR following the completion of the ESR-ARA Asset Management merger.

In addition to expanding its Singapore presence last year, Ivanhoe Cambridge in March announced that it had set up a $500 million India office joint venture with local development giant Embassy Group, and in January 2021 had launched a $400 million Japan last mile logistics joint venture with PAG.