Galetti, one of South Africa’s foremost commercial property consultancies, has secured a formal relationship with the world’s leading independent property group – and also the African continent’s biggest player – Knight Frank. The newly formed Galetti Knight Frank will service its collective clients’ commercial property needs across South Africa.
In a separate announcement, Knight Frank has opted to double its brand scope with another move – this time in the local residential sector – that sees residential partners Knight Frank Anne Porter re-brand solely as Knight Frank in the Western Cape. The co-ordination and timing of two significant transactions across residential and commercial, with highly successful and long-standing property partners, has sent a clear message to the industry.
Founded in 1896 and headquartered in London, Knight Frank is one of the oldest property groups in the world. It employs over 13,700 professionals across 370 offices; 68 offices in the UK, 78 offices in Continental Europe, 53 offices in Asia Pacific, 154 offices in the Americas and 23 offices in Africa and the Middle East.
Now, commercial clients across the Galetti Knight Frank partnership will benefit from a truly international skillset and service offering. According to Tony Galetti, co-founder of Galetti, the relationship will generate instructions from larger corporate tenants, enabling the consultancy to better serve local landlords. In addition, it will assist in finding unique foreign buyers in order to better serve Galetti Knight Frank’s local sellers.
Galetti describes the consultancy’s robust national footprint as ranking it among one of only a handful of national companies in the country and it’s this expansive reach that contributed to the concluding of 250 contracts in the last financial year, including both lease and sale transactions. Due to the consultancy’s on-going, rapid expansion, Galetti Knight Frank is recruiting more top industry players to join the dynamic team.
Galetti comments, “We are delighted to make public our formal association with Knight Frank and look forward to improving our links to multi-national companies and also importantly, to offering our clients a service that we can confidently say meets Global Best Practice.”
Knight Frank partner, Peter Welborn says, “We chose Galetti because of their dynamic and passionate approach to helping clients achieve personal and business goals. We believe this mutually beneficial alliance with Galetti will better enable us to go the extra mile in order to exceed our clients’ expectations – a key motivator in all our business decisions. We can now meet clients’ property requirements both locally and internationally and in terms of commercial, residential, research and valuations. That’s a compelling proposition.”
Alistair Elliott, chairman of Knight Frank LLP commented: “The Africa continent is a key part of our global expansion. Teaming up with Galetti gives us a quantum shift to our plan at a time when Africa is becoming more attractive for both inward and outward investment. I have no doubt that with an infrastructure of 19 offices and over 500 people this puts Knight Frank in a unique position to help occupiers, investors and developers throughout the continent.”
Galetti Knight Frank will be complemented by the Knight Frank Valuations Division represented nationally. Says Susan Turner, Director of Knight Frank Valuations, “The African property market has long been earmarked as presenting tremendous opportunity. Now with a fully integrated team of highly experienced property professionals, we’re well placed to play a pivotal role within industry.”
Knight Frank’s network of national and global offices enables its Valuations Division to conduct comprehensive market and valuation research virtually anywhere in world, and produce unrivalled data and analysis on global property markets and values, along with the political and economic factors affecting them. Clients include listed funds, global corporates, private individuals and the public sector. Knight Frank South Africa has valued in excess of R5 Billion in assets during the past 12 months and provided advisory services to numerous clients with regards to buying, selling, development planning and rent reviews.
Key to the success of the newly formed extended international team is, according to all parties involved, the shared corporate culture and philosophy. Galetti concludes, “We are all fully on board to ensure our united offering remains the number one choice here in South Africa as well as the rest of Africa.”
The extended team, with Knight Frank represented in eight major countries in Africa, is now well poised to capture this market.