Eighteen months after establishing itself within the hotel property market, HTL Property has announced the launch of a new arm of the business, HTL Capital.

HTL Capital is a specialist debt and capital origination business, and will be helmed by Rick Woelms, a former senior banker at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). HTL Capital will provide debt advisory services regarding single, syndicated or common terms pool debt packaging. It will also source indicative terms sheets for hospitality assets brought to market.

HTL Property’s Asia Pacific Director, Andrew Jolliffe, applauded the appointment of Woelms to lead the division.

“Rick’s 18 years as an executive with a major lender is representative of the pedigree alignment HTL Property seeks to be recognised alongside.

“This is a significant appointment, and quite simply there are very few finance specialists nationally in the hospitality and leisure property class with the reputation and experience Rick Woelms enjoys,” Jolliffe added.

“We see this as a natural progression for our organisation, and indicative of a commitment to our current and future client base in terms of both the depth and quality of the firm’s service capacity.”

Woelms served as an account director for CBA focused specifically on the hospitality sector for more than decade.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my time with one of Australia’s leading lending institutions and now look forward, with a great deal of enthusiasm, to launching a new business offering designed to create value and clarity in an increasingly complex banking environment,” stated Woelms.

“The provision of capital origination and debt structuring by brokerage firms is not a new phenomenon, but it is certainly more prevalent in the U.S. and Europe as distinct from here in Australia.”

HTL Capital will operate wholly independently from HTL Property.

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