Giles Wintle

Biculturality and curiosity have been very useful in learning to always question the status-quo. I firmly believe that questioning widely-held beliefs is essential to successful investing.

I have found that a dual education and experience in finance and real estate offers a similar advantage and it has often allowed me to take a different view and identify the best path to outperformance.

Having managed development assets in an emerging market in a crisis, I have seen the acute effects of risk on a business plan. Understanding these risks and applying them in lower-risk scenarios has been key to producing performance in the core portfolios I have managed.

As a self-appointed entrepreneur inside several institutions, I firmly believe that real estate performs best when approached with entrepreneurial spirit and principles.

Over the last 22 years, I have been lucky enough to work as advisor, investor, developer and as a manager of institutional funds; both in direct and indirect real estate. The world has changed beyond all recognition during this time and yet markets have been slow to adapt to fundamental changes in the structure of demand.

I believe that the real estate sector needs to better harness creativity. Empowering a team of diverse individuals is the best way to achieve this. Failure to capture the contributions of our people by formatting them to mimic yesterday’s model will surely lead to failure. The technology industry realised this a long time ago and the effect in determining the winners and the losers is now obvious for all to see.

The next leader in real estate has yet to be formed.