NewKnight Frank CEO keen on luring Chinese customers

Having spent 26 years in the real estate industry, Piers Brunner, aged 48, spent 20 of those years at Colliers International.

He left Colliers last year where he held down the post of chief executive officer for Asia and joined Knight Frank as chief executive officer for Greater China, based in Hong Kong, with the writ to further develop Knight Frank’s business across Greater China amid the growing cross border trade between Chinese and international investors.

Q: How to capture the growing Chinese outbound market?

A: Its both domestic and outbound investment sectors. We need to be able to transact domestic market deals. Chinese outbound investment is on the rise. We have got a team of two. That has been set up four to five months ago and their jobs are speaking to Chinese outbound money. They are Chinese developers, Chinese insurance companies, high net worth individuals and institutional funds such as sovereign funds.

People in Knight Frank did it before. Now they are more specific in it.

We are tracking and expanding (the business). We try to understand what they are looking for and trying to match. Knight Frank got a very good capital markets team in Australia and in Europe. They have qualified products to offer. When Chinese look for trophy assets such as Grade A office and even residential assets, we can offer to show them.