LaSalle at home with global securities

David Quirk

LaSalle Investment Management client services Australia director David Quirk believes a key component separating the fund manager from its competition in global property securities is that it is first and foremost a real estate company.

“One of the things that differentiates us from the rest of the people doing this is we are not a financial institution; we are a property company and that’s all we do — we just manage property assets,” he said.

Perhaps this was an advantage that enabled LaSalle to cross the line first in the Global Property Securities category of the Money Management / IMCA Fund Manager of the Year Awards 2007.

With 26 offices located in cities throughout the world, LaSalle is the subsidiary investment management arm of Jones Lang LaSalle, which is one of the world’s biggest property services companies.

Currently in Australia it has global property securities mandates up and running in the wholesale market, as well as distributions to the retail market through Equity Trustees.

Finalist in this category, ING Investment Management, offers the ING Wholesale Global Property Securities Fund, which is managed by ING Clarion Real Estate.

According to ING director of listed property trusts Justin Blaess, the investment team has direct property experience averaging more than 20 years, and also has access to proprietary private real estate market research.

“This means we get a truly global view of property markets,” he said.

“We apply a truly global active management approach to security, region/ country and property sector exposures.”

The other finalist in this category is RREEF, the global real estate and infrastructure investment management division of Deutsche AssetManagement. It attributes the global business and network to its success in global property securities.