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Agencies & People

easyProperty founder resigns directorship at site’s former holding company

Rob Ellice is no longer a director at Eprop Services Ltd which since 2017 has been the holding company for both the Guild and easyProperty.

Nigel Lewis

easyproperty

easyProperty co-founder Rob Ellice has resigned as a director of the website’s former holding company Eprop Services Ltd, ending a nearly five year run as a director of the firm.

The 44-year-old parted company with easyProperty in October 2017 five years after he founded the online estate agency.

Earlier that year he was replaced as Chief Executive by Jon Cooke but stayed on as Commercial Director before stepping down.

He stayed on as a director of its parent company Eprop Services Ltd but largely stayed out of the limelight.

This included radio silence on his usually boisterous social media accounts until June this year when he sold his remaining 1.9 million shares in the company to City investment vehicle Toscafund as part of its takeover bid for Eprop.

Toscafund

After hoovering up Eprop Services shares on the open market and adding Ellice’s shares, Toscafund was then obliged to make a mandatory offer to the remaining shareholders of 50p a share after its ownership passed the 40% threshold. The fund was also one of the early investors in the online agency back in 2015.

The takeover bid valued Eprop Services at £17.85 million. The company then sold the previously loss-making easyProperty to Evolve last month for an undisclosed sum despite the attempted Toscafund takeover.

Like many other online and hybrid agent founders including the Bruce brothers and Russell Quirk, Ellice (pictured, above) had a traditional estate agency background before launching easyProperty including a 13-year stint at Essex estate agency Clarke Hillyer.

August 16, 2019

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