Harbert Management Corporation, a privately owned alternative asset manager with $8.1 billion in regulatory assets under management, has restructured the leadership team of its European real estate platform.
Florent Danset has joined as a senior managing director and co-head of European real estate. The European platform is known as HERE. Prior to joining HMC, he co-founded Alte, a boutique investment manager specialising in European value-add real estate, following senior investment roles at Blackstone and Partners Group.
Danset will be co-head of European real estate alongside senior managing director David King, who has been with Harbert for 18 years. They are supported by principals Roque Rotaeche in Spain and Eric Desautel in France, both of whom have been with Harbert for 18 years.
Danset will focus on capital formation and product development, while King will continue leading on divestment and asset management initiatives for existing HERE investments. They will collaborate on investing in new opportunities.
To date, Harbert, a firm that has its headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, has transacted on approximately €5.9 billion of European real estate, having established HERE in 2002. Over the past 24 months, HERE has deployed €485 million in the living sector and €184 million into industrial across the United Kingdom, Spain and France. It has also been active in dispositions including the recent sale of a 1.2 million-square-foot logistics asset in France to Amazon.
Travis Pritchett, president of Harbert Management, said in a statement: “Florent brings the strategic insight gained from his experience at global institutional asset managers, combined with an entrepreneurial mindset and a hands-on leadership style. European real estate remains a key pillar within our broader real assets platform. Our focus on creating value at the asset level, in markets and sectors supported by clear structural tailwinds gives us the ability to perform consistently through all phases of the market cycle.
Danset added: “It is a privilege to join a leading mid-market real estate investor with more than two decades of cycle-tested performance and deep local roots in Europe. HMC’s strong culture, reflected in the tenure and cohesion of its European leadership, was a major draw. Its differentiated, disciplined investment approach, within a global institutional platform, made the opportunity particularly compelling."