Karim Esch moves up to board of Union Investment Institutional Property GmbH

Karim Esch, a long-time manager at Union Investment Institutional Property GmbH, is joining the board of the Hamburg-based real estate investment company with effect from 1 March 2021. As a member of the board, the 49-year-old will primarily be responsible for the AIFM Services Business, which has grown under his leadership to become an important part of the solution portfolio for institutional real estate clients with a current volume of around EUR 8 billion. The company’s top management team will continue to comprise four members; Karim Esch will be working alongside Wolfgang Kessler, Dr. Christoph Holzmann and Klaus Bollmann. As part of the move, Jörn Stobbe will step down from the board of Union Investment Institutional Property GmbH in order to concentrate on asset management as a member of the senior management team of sister company Union Investment Real Estate GmbH.

Karim Esch joined the company in February 2011. He started his career at Union Investment in Client Management Institutional, where he was the account manager for selected German institutional investors and responsible for all new product development of institutional real estate funds for the Union Investment Group. In 2014, Esch took charge of the AIFM Services Business and pooling vehicles unit and led a ten-person fund manager team. Since then, he has been responsible for designing and launching a total of 18 real estate special funds and three real estate funds of funds. A total of 14 external asset managers were engaged for these institutional real estate solutions under Esch’s leadership, and around 300 real estate transactions were reviewed and executed.

Prior to joining Union Investment, Esch held various positions in the Commerzbank Group, where he spent almost eleven and a half years. In the last four years of that period, he worked for Commerz Grundbesitz-Spezialfondsgesellschaft mbH and Commerz Real AG, where he was initially Director of Institutional Sales and then Head of Institutional Sales, with responsibility for national and international institutional investors.

Karim Esch has a diploma in banking administration. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and banking and a master’s degree in finance in real estate.