Kingly Partners, the Central London investment adviser, has launched an office agency department, recruiting Toby Hall from JLL to lead the team, CoStar News can reveal.
Hall, previously a director in JLL's central London office, started work this month running a department Kingly says will complement the investment team's work and improve advice to clients.
Kingly says Hall's team will advise on "fast-evolving occupier requirements and ensure that landlords' design, specification, placemaking and sustainability moves the needle and elevates standards in a competitive fast-moving market".
Kingly has also recruited Tomaz Phillips from SHB Real Estate as a surveyor to work with Hall.
Kingly was co-founded by Paul Rowntree, who runs the business alongside fellow equity partner Sam Stevens, who joined shortly after it launched in 2007.
It was launched by the former investment team at Central London adviser EA Shaw. At EA Shaw, Rowntree was instrumental in the £421 million purchase of the Covent Garden market and piazza for Capital & Counties, now Shaftesbury Capital.
Hall spent nine years at JLL’s United Arab Emirates office as head of commercial agency before returning in February 2022 to the Central London agency team. Throughout his tenure, he was involved in a number of high profile transactions working on behalf of some of the Middle East’s most prominent investors and developers. This included appointments on HSBC Tower and ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai where space has been leased to occupiers including JLL, EY, UBS, BlackRock and Julius Baer.
Speaking to CoStar News, Hall said he had known Stevens since studying real estate and playing hockey together at Reading University, while he worked with Rowntree at EA Shaw.
"Kingly has never done the office leasing and tenant rep side of things and it just seemed the right people and right time. We are very positive about the market now," Rowntree explained.
Hall will also focus on work with Middle East clients. "I have strong contacts there and obviously there are strong links into the London market."
Harry Whitaker, a chartered surveyor, joins as an associate partner, has been recruited from LSH to work with the investment team. “We have been very fortunate to recruit three top quality agents doubling the size of Kingly,” Rowntree says.