Avison Young Continues Global Push With 5 Key Appointments
The company promoted two finance executives and hired three outside professionals for newly-created positions.
TORONTO, CANADA—Avison Young has made five key finance and strategy appointments that will further the company’s global expansion plans.
The appointments include the promotions of two Avison Young finance executives and the hiring of three outside professionals to newly-created positions. “These strategic promotions and hires will bolster the team as we continue to deploy a tremendous amount of capital and expand our global footprint through more recruitment, mergers, acquisitions and new-office openings,” Chair and CEO Mark Rose said in prepared remarks.
The five are:
- Tom Morande, who was promoted to CFO of North America. Morande has served as Avison Young’s Chief Accounting Officer since joining the company in 2015.
- Ricardo Jenkins, who was promoted to Chief Accounting Officer. Jenkins was previously Avison Young’s Global Controller. He joined the firm in 2016 from JLL, where he served as a leader within the Americas finance team.
- Robert Dunlop, who joins as Global Treasurer. Dunlop was most recently Vice-President & Group Treasurer at INEOS Styrolution Group GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany.
- Ashwini Sawhney, who joins as Director of Strategy. She previously worked in the corporate development groups of Fortune 1000 companies, as an advisor to private-equity-owned middle-market companies and at a global financial advisory firm.
- Steve Cresswell, who joins as European Director of Finance and Operations. He most recently was EMEA CFO & COO of JLL’S Office Fit-Out business.
The four finance leaders will report to CFO Christine Battist and Sawhney will report to Avison Young’s Chief Strategy Officer Hiren Thakar. Morande, Jenkins, Dunlop and Sawhney will be based in Avison Young’s Chicago office and Cresswell will be based in London, UK.
A Global Push
The appointments are part of Avison Young’s global expansion program, which began last year with funding from Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and was heightened by the completion of the acquisition of UK-based GVA on February 1, 2019.
In the past two and a half months alone, the GVA acquisition has sparked hires and promotions involving more than 60 global professionals, brokers and subject-matter experts, as well as acquisitions of brokerage operations in Germany and Canada.