E&Y Bolsters RE Advisory Lines

NEW YORK CITY-The former COO of Barclays Capital’s corporate real estate team is now a senior manager with Ernst & Young’s construction and real estate advisory services practice, highlighting the firm’s expansion of that practice. Jim Harding’s appointment as a senior manager in the New York office comes as Steven Teubner takes on a similar role in Chicago, while New Yorker Mark Gibson has moved west to support the practice’s West Coast growth.

At Barclays, Harding had day-to-day operational responsibility for the real estate portfolio and was the lead program manager for the Lehman Brothers integration and the divestiture of Barclays Global Investors and EquiFirst. Before that, Harding held key positions at General Electric and HSBC. “Jim’s experience as a chief operating officer brings yet another level of corporate experience to EY’s advisory team, especially in dealing with corporate leaders on a wide range of business issues in addition to real estate related challenges,” Mark Costello, Americas leader of the CREAS practice, says in a release.
Teubner was previously facilities director at NexGen, where he oversaw improvements to the triple bottom line performance of NexGen’s facilities portfolio, and general manager at BAE Systems, where he implemented an $8-million campaign to develop an intelligent building program. Gibson has been a principal with E&Y’s New York office; in its Orange County office he’ll spearhead the delivery of services for Western CREAS clients.

 “This cements our operations in the west and builds off our major projects at City Center in Las Vegas, and with major clients in the Seattle and Orange County areas,” Gibson says in a release.  “We have grown in the region so that in only 18 months we are now the second largest construction and real estate advisory practice.  We are set to continue this growth through the near future.”