Airport expands senior property team
The property and development arm of Manchester Airports Group has appointed Jonathan Haigh as director of development management and infrastructure and Ken Mellis as head of estates.
Haigh is a chartered surveyor and joined MAG Property from PWC, where he was real estate director since September 2009. Prior to that he was development director at Ballymore for over five years, and has led a number of schemes and transactions across all main property sectors and in UK and international markets.
In his new role as director of development management and infrastructure, he will be responsible for leading on MAG's developments across its current property portfolio and emerging developments such as Airport City Manchester.
Mellis will oversee facilities management of the full investment portfolio for MAG, which extends across London Stansted, Manchester, East Midlands and Bournemouth airports.
He was previously real estate manager for BAE Systems Properties for seven years, a role which included establishing and implementing a number of Enterprise Zones across three BAE Systems sites in Lancashire and Humber.
Both of the positions are newly-created roles.
MAG Property has seen a number of senior personnel changes in the past year. Nick Hynes, former managing director of Magnus, is understood to have joined in January, while John Atkins, managing director of MAG Property, left in December to join NJL Planning. In June 2014, former director of real estate at Aberdeen Asset Management, Lynda Shillaw, joined MAG as property chief executive.
Shillaw said: "We are developing the MAG Property business by strengthening the team with two high-calibre recruits, who each have specialist expertise and broad experience. This is critical as we move into a very exciting period, and position our business for growth.
"MAG's property business has big aspirations to develop land assets across our estates and it is important that we have scale and versatility, particularly as we look to drive forward a variety of schemes with a mix of uses. This not only includes Airport City but master-planning and developing schemes at Stansted, East Midlands and Bournemouth."
MAG Property is responsible for the £800m Airport City development, part of Greater Manchester's Enterprise Zone.
Airport City Manchester is being led by a group of joint venture partners made up of Beijing Construction & Engineering Group, Carillion and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, with Argent appointed as the development manager. MAG has the remaining 50% share.
