Savills global CEO to retire as UK commercial star takes up reins
Long-serving company man Jeremy Helsby is to retire and Mark Ridley, who is UK CEO, will replace him in a years' time.
The Group CEO of Savills, Jeremy Helsby, is to retire in 12 months after which he will hand over to his successor, the current UK CEO Mark Ridley, it has been announced.
63-year-old Jeremy Helsby (pictured, left), who is paid £2.23 million a year and joined the company 39 years ago initially as a farmland broker, has been its group CEO for eleven years and has overseen the transformation of Savills into a global property brand.
But he is not leaving the company entirely and will continue in an advisory role to its growing US business which he helped set up the operation in the late 1980s before it was shut down following the 1988 financial crash and then later re-started and aggressively expanded.
Mark Ridley (pictured, right) joined Savills in 1996 and then quickly rose through the senior ranks within its office and retail operations, latterly as CEO of its UK commercial business, then CEO of the UK to after which he then had Europe added to his responsibilities.
The appointment of someone with such a strong commercial property background is not a surprise – 85% of Savills turnover now comes from this sector.
“Under Jeremy Helsby’s leadership Savills has been transformed into a leading global real estate advisor, tripling revenue and offering the full range of transactional, asset management and consultancy services to clients in the world’s prime real estate markets,” says Savills Plc Chairman Nicholas Ferguson.
“Jeremy has successfully both internationalised and diversified the business during his decade as Chief Executive.”
The planned exit of Jeremy from the business and group CEO follows the announcement yesterday that the company is likely to reveal better than expected figures when its full-year results are published in March, helped in part by a strong finish last year by its UK residential arm.
