Our People - Cavendish Maxwell

Jay Grant

MSc, IRRV (Hons), MRICS

Founder and Chairman

Jay is from the UK and moved to Dubai in May 2008 before setting up Cavendish Maxwell with a business partner 5 months later. Following on from this in 2014, Jay set up the real estate intelligence platform, Property Monitor.

Jay holds a BA honours degree in economics and accountancy and a master’s degree in estate management. He spent 6 years in the City of London with Sanwa International and JP Morgan before embarking on a career in property and subsequently qualifying as a chartered surveyor in 2006.

Jay’s real estate experience covers valuation, landlord and tenant, property management, commercial agency, fund management and investment. Jay is a creative business thinker and the driving force behind Cavendish Maxwell’s emergence from a niche valuation company into a larger multidiscipline surveying practice. The flame of ambition still burns very bright he says, as the next few years will demonstrate.

Away from work Jay is an Arsenal season ticket holder, Ironman triathlete, white collar boxer and keen cyclist who cycled half the Tour de France route in July 2017 averaging 200km a day.
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James Cresswell

BA (Hons), MSc MRICS

Partner, Head of Commercial Valuation

James joined Cavendish Maxwell in March 2014. He has more than 16 years of experience in valuing a diverse range of properties including residential apartments and villas, commercial properties, trading properties, and development sites including large mixed-use developments in both, the UK and Middle East.

James has gained a wealth of valuation experience having led related activities on a diverse range of regional and international properties. He specialises in advising lending institutions and conducting valuations for property funds, corporate entities and for IPO purposes. His client portfolio includes international and local banks, lending institutions, developers, investors, owner occupiers as well as accountants, legal firms and insolvency practitioners.

James is joint head of the Commercial Valuation department and is responsible for valuations of all property types. He also champions quality assurance and project excellence to provide high-quality and timely reports in accordance with RICS Red Book/International Valuation Standard Council (IVSC) standards.

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Nigel Armstrong

FMAAT

Chief Executive Officer

Nigel joined Cavendish Maxwell as CEO in July 2016. A pro-active leader with a passion for scaling business size and growth, he spent a large proportion of his career as CEO and shareholder at the Bannatyne Group. Here he was accountable for the operations and management of over 3,500 staff in 66 locations nationwide and was instrumental in growing turnover from zero in 1997 to over £100m in 2013.

Nigel is a qualified accountant by profession and holds a strong managerial background with in excess of 25 years senior experience across a range of sectors including leisure, hospitality, health clubs, hotels, bars, casinos, children's day nurseries and manufacturing. His core strengths lie in his astute business understanding and elite leadership style; motivating teams to consistently deliver on targets.

Outside of work, Nigel enjoys spending time with his wife Jacqui and three beautiful daughters Olivia, Ella and Lucia. He loves movies and trips to the cinema, as well as playing golf. He is also a passionate yet frustrated Newcastle United fan.
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Jessica Taylor

BSc (Hons)

HR Director

Jessica Taylor joined Cavendish Maxwell in 2016. As HR Director, Jessica is responsible for the development and execution of all HR strategies, policies, services and programmes. She brings to the HR team over 10 years of extensive people-management skills and hands-on experience leading HR initiatives.

Jessica’s expertise is founded on understanding and translating business objectives into meaningful strategies and polices that engage and motivate employees and create a positive work environment. Placing immense importance on employee engagement, Jessica’s believes in the principle that people tend to support what they help to create.

Prior to her role at Cavendish Maxwell, Jessica held various positions within private and public sector companies in the UK. Her meticulous approach, passion to understand what motivates people, and her support in helping them achieve their full potential has inspired positive change in the organisations where she has worked.

Her key areas of expertise includes policy design, employee engagement, compensation, performance management, recruiting, compliance reporting, HR workflow development, training and development, and benefits administration.
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Sofia Underabi

MRICS, AAPI

Partner, Head of Residential Valuation

Sofia is a qualified surveyor with over 12 years’ international experience in the UK, Middle East and Australia. Sofia was previously with CBRE, Stockland Property Group as well as Legal and General, in Sydney and London, where she focused on property valuation, advisory and investment management.

Sofia is responsible for banks as well as private and institutional clients, overseeing valuations throughout the UAE and the wider region. Some of her current clients include Aldar, Meraas, Dubai Properties, Emirates NBD, Mashreq Bank, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank, SAMBA, HSBC and Standard Chartered, among others.
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Paul Barker

BSc (Hons), MRICS

Partner, Head of Commercial Valuation

Paul has 20 years of experience in valuation and consultancy services and has worked in leading international practices across the UAE, Oman, Europe and the UK.

His professional knowledge encompasses all property asset classes including large, complex master plan developments of mixed-use properties in office, retail, industrial, leisure, hospitality and residential sectors. Paul is professionally qualified to value minerals, waste and recycling properties as well as environmental land considerations.

Paul’s client portfolio includes international and local banks, lending institutions, developers, investors, owner occupiers as well as accountants, legal firms and insolvency practitioners. As joint head of the Commercial Valuation department he is responsible for valuations of all property types. He ensures quality assurance and provides timely RICS Red Book/International Valuation Standard Council (IVSC) standard reports.
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Daniel Harrison

BSc (Hons), MRICS

Associate Partner, Specialist Valuation

Daniel Harrison has been with Cavendish Maxwell since September 2010, gaining nine years of experience in the Commercial Valuation team. He is an expert RERA-registered valuer and an accomplished chartered surveyor in the MENA region, offering expertise to varied clients on all aspects of valuations across specialty asset classes.

His team is responsible for all valuations relating to assets positioned in specialist sectors, including hotels, hospitality and leisure, education, medical facilities, exhibition halls, district cooling plants, retail, restaurants and nightclubs.

Daniel has overseen and provided considered advice on over 200 operational hotels in the UAE, offering focussed competitor profiling and operational performance analysis to clients. His core disciplines incorporate extensive yield profiling and value analysis with detailed financial modelling and accurate forecasting, helping unlock an asset’s true market value.

Daniel is a RICS-accredited valuer and alongside providing expert valuations services is responsible for ensuring the creation and delivery of the highest quality reports in accordance with RICS Red Book and International Valuation Standard Council (IVSC) standards.
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Benjamin Walker

BSc (Hons), MRICS

Head of Project and Building Consultancy

Benjamin is a Chartered Building Surveyor bringing over 15 years of global professional experience to the Project and Building Consultancy team at Cavendish Maxwell. Over the course of his career, he has successfully advised top-tier international clients from around the world on portfolio acquisitions/disposals, lifecycle costing, technical due diligence, and building pathology, among others. He has delivered a full range of project management services including new builds, refurbishment, fit-out and alterations.

Prior to his role at Cavendish Maxwell, Benjamin headed up the building consultancy department of the New Zealand arm of a global real estate firm. He also has extensive experience in the UK and the wider Middle East, covering building consultancy services across the GCC for a variety of projects and asset classes for developers, investment trusts, local authorities and large private clients in the region. He has advised clients from China, Singapore and Australia on some of the largest property acquisitions in both New Zealand and Australia.

Being an RICS-accredited Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) assessor, Benjamin provides consistently distinguished standards of service for the company and the wider surveying profession in the UAE.
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Khalil Alzadjali

Head of Oman

Khalil Al Zadjali has served as the Head of Cavendish Maxwell in Oman since 2017. He has a BTEC Higher National Diploma (HND) in business and finance from the UK and brings over 14 years of experience in valuations across the Sultanate in commercial, residential and investment properties. Khalil’s expertise has helped cement relationships with government agencies and high-profile clients in Oman and the wider GCC.

Prior to his role at Cavendish Maxwell, he led the Valuations team at Hamptons International, using his in-depth industry knowledge to accurately value various real estate assets. Khalil retained a substantial number of clients in the move to Cavendish Maxwell, and his strong, long-lasting relationships with all major banks in Oman have been invaluable to the growth of the company’s presence in the Sultanate.
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Julian Roche

MA (Oxon), MPhil, PhD

Chief Economist

Julian joined Cavendish Maxwell as Chief Economist in January 2019. Coming from an old real estate family in Ireland, his career as an economist began with a first-class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics at the age of 19, following which Julian was an analyst with the UK Government. He later helped develop and launch the UK’s residential forecasting service with the firms that merged to become Global Insight. Julian subsequently developed derivatives in the City of London and established real estate futures contracts for what is now the International Commodity Exchange. He also ran a property development and management firm, before eventually serving as an international consultant and trainer to governments, central banks and notable firms including AXA, Citibank, DBS, Deloitte and Thomson Reuters.

Julian fills his work-free time with academic pursuits; he holds several postgraduate degrees, including a PhD in International Risk Management Policy, and also the Licensed Conveyancer qualification. Julian has published many business and academic texts and articles, and is also a keen walker – especially fond of the Scottish Highlands.
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Sarah-Jane Carter

BA (Hons) DipM

Head of Marketing

Sarah-Jane joined Cavendish Maxwell in January 2020 as Head of Marketing and is responsible for the development of the marketing strategy and execution across the Middle East region. An energetic and results driven marketer, Sarah-Jane possesses a wealth of multi-channel marketing experience, within both B2B and B2C environments which she has gained over a 25 year career. Prior to joining Cavendish Maxwell, Sarah-Jane held senior marketing positions for major developers in Dubai including Emaar, Dubai Properties and Dubai Sports City. She also worked for IWG as the Regional Marketing Director responsible for the MEA and APAC regions. Before relocating to the UAE in 2005, Sarah-Jane held various management roles in public and private sector companies in the UK including ten years at Royal Mail and seven years at the Bank of America.

Sarah-Jane is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has a BA(Hons) Degree in Business and Marketing
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Mark Dunford

Partner, Head of Investment

As Partner - Head of Investment, Mark leads the investor services and commercial agency teams at Cavendish Maxwell with a focus on transactions, investment advisory and structured finance.

Mark is a Swiss/Kenyan national with more than 16 years of experience, initially in yield management and hospitality real estate advisory. His broad range of experience includes owner-operator structuring, brokerage, master planning, development and strategic consulting work across the globe, with a focus on Europe and the Middle East and Africa.

In his previous role, Mark was the head of JLL East Africa and a senior director in the MENA’s capital markets team where he oversaw JLL’s business operations while managing key assignments and clients across the region. Prior to that Mark was a senior consultant at a Swiss advisory firm providing strategic advice on large scale mixed-use and hotel development projects in over 50 countries. In his other past roles, Mark has been a development director for Singaporean private equity fund KOP’s Spain-based Stein Management Company and has headed up the growth of the brand and asset portfolio of Franklyn Hotels & Resorts. With a comprehensive background in real estate, Mark has also served in the London offices of Jones Lang LaSalle where his primary responsibility was working on hotel asset sales and acquisitions.

Mark’s diverse projects have included fulfilling a role as chief accommodation advisor to the International Olympic Committee for the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, developing hotels from concept to opening on a single asset and portfolio basis, destination development planning, brand and corporate strategies as well as the creation of learning centres on behalf of governments and private clients across Asia, Europe and Africa.

Mark holds a Bachelor of Science HES⁠-⁠SO in Hospitality Management from École Hôtelière de Lausanne.
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Rashed Aljowder

Surveyor and Head of Business Development - Bahrain and KSA Eastern Province

Rashed joined Cavendish Maxwell in 2020 as a surveyor and head of business development for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.

Rashed’s background encompasses valuation, brokerage, finance and management. Prior to his appointment at Cavendish Maxwell, Rashed successfully established a leading real estate services firm where he provided advisory services to developers, banks, valuers and investors for the acquisition and disposal of real estate assets. He also helped promote international investment in Bahrain’s real estate sector through strategic partnerships with respected international developers.

As a Bahraini national, Rashed has developed valuable connections in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and is responsible for identifying and securing growth opportunities for the firm in new markets.

Rashed holds a BA Accounting and Finance degree from Oxford Brookes University, UK and received the Certificate in Commercial Valuation Methodology from RICS in January 2020.
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Zak Harper

AssocRICS

Property Manager

Zak joined Cavendish Maxwell in February 2021 as a property manager to lead the launch of the new property management service in the Oman market.

With seven years’ experience in the Middle East real estate industry, he has built an impressive property management portfolio and has been responsible for managing over 330,000 sq m of real estate across commercial and residential asset classes. During his career in real estate, he has managed a diverse range of properties for high net-worth individuals, private clients, pension funds and government entities.

Zak has a wealth of knowledge and experience using both custom-built and off-the-shelf property management systems to maximise the return on any property. In his previous role, he was responsible for the rollout of the property management platform to local and international teams within the business as well as clients and external partners.

Prior to joining Cavendish Maxwell, Zak worked as a senior property manager at Savills Middle East. He became an Associate Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 2017 and graduated from the University College of Estate Management, United Kingdom in 2019. Zak is currently working towards completing his Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) to become an MRICS in early 2022.

Zak has a proven track record of successfully managing client relationships and is dedicated to providing exceptional property management services to Cavendish Maxwell clients across Oman.
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Yousir Habib

MSc

Surveyor and Head of Business Development ‑ Sharjah and Northern Emirates

Yousir joined Cavendish Maxwell in 2014 and has worked within the residential and commercial valuation departments, gaining valuable experience from both businesses. He has been exposed to a range of asset classes including industrial warehouses, labour camps, development land plots, and residential and commercial towers.

Through the years, Yousir has gathered meaningful experience to execute property valuation requirements for purposes from master plan developments to single and multi-tenanted investment portfolios of all property types, complexities, size and value. Yousir has also been the lead valuer in a number of large mixed-use property portfolios across Dubai and the northern emirates.

As Surveyor and Head of Business Development - Sharjah and Northern Emirates, he continues to draw on his knowledge from across the asset types and departments to provide holistic valuations in old Dubai and the northern emirates in accordance with the RICS Red Book and International Valuation Standard Council (IVSC) standards.

A Syrian national, Yousir was born and raised in the UAE and is an Arabic speaker which has helped him develop strong working relationships with local clients and partners. He graduated from Ajman University with a BSc in Marketing and received a master’s degree in Real Estate Investment and Finance from Heriot Watt University in 2018.
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Gregg Davenport

Associate, Machinery and Business Assets

Gregg is an Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) with the American Society of Appraisers, bringing global valuation expertise to the machinery and business assets team at Cavendish Maxwell. He has conducted valuations throughout Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and North, Central and South America. During this time, he advised top-tier international clients on plant and machinery valuation matters for disposal, secured lending, insurance, and accounting purposes, as well as completed inter-company transfer valuations for multinational corporations.

Gregg has vast experience in both ASA and RICS bases of value, including valuations for fair value, fair market value in continued use/installed/removed, orderly liquidation value, forced liquidation value, and market value in place/for removal.

He has catered to sectors and markets including manufacturing, construction, F&B, automotive, aerospace, textiles, woodworking, mining, engineering, marine, plastics, public sector, education, oil and gas, commercial vehicles, electronics and semiconductors.

At Cavendish Maxwell, Gregg is responsible for overseeing plant and machinery valuations for loan security, accounts and insurance purposes. His remit also includes business development, reviewing reports and valuations, and delivering new proposals.

In his previous role, Gregg worked as associate director for a UK-based valuation firm, where he focused on valuations for loan security and restructuring purposes.
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Adam Fitzpatrick

Associate Partner, Bahrain

Adam is a RICS-qualified chartered surveyor with over 10 years’ experience in the real estate industry. He joined Cavendish Maxwell Bahrain in 2020 to launch the regional operation and was previously part of the firm’s offices in both the UAE and Oman. As part of the commercial valuation team, his focus was to maintain the quality and speed of valuations for Cavendish Maxwell’s local and international banking clients. In his latest role, Adam’s responsibility is to develop Cavendish Maxwell Bahrain’s operations across all service lines and support the team in replicating the quality and standards achieved by the regional business offices.

Having initially worked in London in positions at CBRE and Colliers International, Adam subsequently re-joined both firms in Vietnam and spent a further three years across a range of disciplines including commercial valuation, development consultancy and investment advisory. He was also responsible for establishing and maintaining key client relationships, undertaking business development activities and working closely with the regional Asia Pacific teams.

Adam holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nottingham and received his MRICS certification in 2010.
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P P Varghese

Partner, Strategy and Consulting

P P Varghese leads Cavendish Maxwell’s strategy and consulting team. Varghese comes with over 17 years’ experience gained through advising government, private and institutional clients on single-use, mixed-use, standalone, and master planned projects. He has been exposed to consulting and operations functions with his expertise spanning development planning and strategy, cost-benefit analysis, operational reviews and monitoring, hotel operator search and negotiations, as well as arbitration support and dispute resolution for hotel management agreements.

In his previous role, Varghese served as Partner - Real Estate Strategy and Consulting at Knight Frank Middle East. There he was responsible for advising clients on real estate development strategy, optimising department processes to enhance revenue, and developing client acquisition and retention strategies.

At Cavendish Maxwell, Varghese will lead an expert team that provides development advisory, feasibility, portfolio analysis and real estate research for all real estate asset classes and will identify new growth opportunities for the business.

Varghese is a Master of Management in Hospitality, majoring in real estate investments and finance from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, New York.
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