The new roles have been created as the firm expands its Sydney-based operations to meet increasing investor demand.

Ms Saw will support the Chief Risk Officer in transaction risk management for the group. She joins Qualitas from Babcock & Brown, where she covered transaction structuring, capital raising, debt financing and acquisitions across infrastructure asset classes. Prior to this, Ms Saw was a member of the structured debt capital markets team at Deutsche Bank and a lawyer in the banking and finance group at Mallesons Stephen Jacques.

Mr Katz’s role as Director, Private Capital, will focus on origination of transactions and growing the firm’s extensive high-net-worth investor relationships.

Prior to joining Qualitas, Mr Katz was responsible for the Private Client Services business of Investec Bank in Australia which was subsequently acquired by the Bank of Queensland Group. He has over 25 years’ of financial markets experience specifically in treasury and investment markets.

Headquartered in Melbourne, Qualitas has been expanding its Sydney team at the same time that demand for alternative financing is growing in the Australian real estate market.

Group Managing Director, Andrew Schwartz, said “The major banks are uniformly pulling back from their construction lending activities due to various regulatory constraints and some concerns around the combination of significant foreign buyers and the potential for pockets of oversupply.”

“This has created a widening of the funding gap, allowing us to provide an important source of funding to high-quality partners, and strong returns to investors in our debt and equity funds.”

The post Qualitas expands Sydney team with two senior appointments appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Ruth McClelland has joined as head of compliance and legal; Chandni Haribhai as risk analyst; and Sarah Usher has been appointed investment analyst.  All three positions are new to the business, bringing the size of the Qualitas team to 35.

Qualitas group managing director Andrew Schwartz said the appointments will ensure the company has the right structure and resources in place as it expands its investment offering to the institutional market.

“Each of the new appointees brings specific expertise and experience to the company, and augment the existing experience and skills of the Qualitas team.

“Clients expect compliance and risk management to be taken very seriously by the investment companies they deal with, and we are very pleased to have attracted such high-qualified professionals to join Qualitas,” he said.

Ms McClelland joins Qualitas from listed funds management business K2 Asset Management, where she was general counsel and company secretary.  She was also head of the compliance committee for K2’s managed investment schemes, and head of anti-money laundering.  Prior to this, she was a lawyer in the corporate group at Lander & Rogers Lawyers.  She holds a bachelor of arts and laws with honours from The University of Melbourne.

Ms Haribhai was most recently with ANZ, managing a portfolio of property sector clients in its institutional property group, covering clients in residential development, commercial office, construction, retail, and hospitality.  As risk analyst at Qualitas, she will report to its chief risk officer and responsibilities include reviewing transaction modelling and documentation, and undertaking feasibility studies.  She holds a bachelor of commerce from the University of Melbourne, and is currently undertaking a master of business administration (MBA) from the Melbourne Business School.

Ms Usher strengthens Qualitas’s investment analysis capability.  She was most recently in the treasury team at Transurban, responsible for financial modelling, debt raising and valuation analysis.  She has also worked in the private equity team at Future Fund, and holds a bachelor of economics and a bachelor of business management from University of Queensland.

The post Qualitas enhances risk and investment capabilities appeared first on AdviserVoice.