Osilaja to leave Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Finance

Barry Osilaja is to leave Jones Lang LaSalle where he has been UK head of debt and structured finance since 2002.

Osilaja plans to move to Africa and will be staying on at the firm until the summer to oversee client handovers.

Debt advisory, which comes under the firm’s corporate finance business unit, will now be headed in London by Dominic Reilly and Richard Porter who will report to Frankfurt-based Jörg Schürmann.

Schürmann joined JLLCF in March this year from Bank of America Merrill Lynch as a managing director and head of corporate finance in Germany and he will take charge of all European debt-related corporate finance transactions.

Reilly and Porter previously worked at King Sturge, which merged with JLL last year. About 25 people joined JLLCF via the merger, increasing the size of the European corporate finance business to 65.

Last year, Osilaja’s team worked on several high-profile deals, including advising

Malyasian investor Robert Kuok and Martua Sitorus on senior debt financing for their first UK purchase, the £288m acquisition of Aviva Tower in the City of London.

JLLCF organised competitive bids between a number of banks to secure terms within five days to support the bid for the tower. Deutsche Bank’s Singapore office, the client’s relationship bank, made the loan.

Osilaja has worked at JLL for 23 years and was a specialist in City of London valuation before focusing on new business and transaction management in debt advisory.

See May’s issue of Real Estate Capital, published on 21 May, for  profiles of Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Finance and sovereign wealth fund Norges Bank Investment Management. Plus a special feature on investing in debt, including non-performing loans and mezzanine.