James qualified as a Chartered Surveyor. He started his professional career as a valuer, in the main, for Institutional UK property funds. Investment and development skills were born out of Strutt & Parker where he became a Partner of the central London investment team working for institutions such as Standard Life and Scottish Widows. In 2003 he turned to the Client side as Managing Director of City & Provincial Estates which was involved in development projects in central London and further afield in central Eastern Europe. As a principle he has worked with private investors from the UK and Middle East, through to pension funds such as CalPERS.
Martin qualified as a Chartered Surveyor working within Chesterton International’s Leisure and Hotel Team and went on to join Strutt and Parker extending his expertise in the commercial property sector focusing on site acquisition and developing occupier strategies. In 2002, Martin founded a commercial property company, Magna Real Estate, specialising in international hotel/ resorts and in 2007 formed Core Real Estate with the sole focus on the development of hospitality based projects. Over the last 20 years Martin has worked with numerous hotel operators and investors throughout the world.
Richard Walker is a former investment banker who spent the last 15 years working in the City. He started his career at Deloitte, where he trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant, specialising in corporate finance. He then moved to ABN AMRO becoming a Director in its European Mergers & Acquisitions team. In 2008, he moved as a Director to Barclay Capital's UK M&A team. Over his career, Richard has advised companies in a variety of sectors on M&A and capital raising transactions totalling over £30bn in value.
Bertie, a Charted Accountant is the Company Secretary and Financial Controller of Fortus. He has worked with James as Financial Controller of City & Provincial Estate and continues to head up the financial monitoring that Fortus expects and provides in order to procure each strategic business plan.