Two former real estate bankers at HSBC have launched an investment boutique.

Maxwell James, former global head of real estate banking at HSBC has become managing partner of Lowndes Partners, bringing with him former colleague Richard Choi. A third partner is Julie Green, former European director at the corporate finance division of property advisers Jones Lang LaSalle. James was hired by HSBC's former investment banking chief John Studzinski in 2004 from Lazard, where he had worked with Choi and Green. His remit at HSBC was to build a global real estate business. Studzinski left HSBC to join Blackstone early this year after HSBC decided to integrate investment and commercial banking and limit investment bank spending. James was among the HSBC bankers who followed Studzinski out of the door. He said: "I decided the time was right to start a new operation." He said Lowndes' partners would own a majority of their firm's equity. He declined to name their co-investors. James said: "We'll concentrate on advisory work. I believe there will be opportunities to advise companies on conversion to real estate investment trust status. In the UK, the new reits will start as generalists but I believe they will specialise in different sectors. All that will require the reparcelling of portfolios, on which we can assist." James said an "unprecedented" weight of capital was seeking exposure to real estate. He conceded that low property yields in certain regions might make it hard for reits to pay sufficiently high dividends to their investors. But he argued that entrepreneurs could create sufficient returns through the active management of their properties. When he was at HSBC, James advised on the $2.6bn (€2bn) of a reit in Hong Kong called Link, the largest reits listing yet seen. He advised on the recent sale of £1.1bn (€1.6bn) of property owned by Canary Wharf to Royal Bank of Scotland and the £1.9bn purchase of property company MEPC by GE Capital and Hermes in 2001.