It’s been a few weeks since we welcomed experienced entrepreneur and business leader, Marshall King, as our new CEO. We catch up with him about his career, the importance of trust within business, and how he came to represent Ireland in the Olympics.

 
Q: Tell us about your work across the property industry and financial services.
A: I’ve worked as a Chief Executive in the financial services, property and technology sectors for over 20 years. During this time, I’ve started, grown, acquired and sold companies, working alongside venture capital and private equity backers.

After starting out in management consultancy at Bain and Company, it wasn’t long before I was drawn to property. In 1999, I founded my first business, a property claims and repairs company called Improveline, which was sold to Homeserve in 2005.

I’ve also had the opportunity to lead a range of private equity backed companies; RFIB Group, Decision Insight Information Group, and DeepCrawl, undertaking varied responsibilities including growth strategy, fundraising and opening subsidiaries.

Q: What are the key business principles you have adopted over your career?
A: My core business principle is that honesty and trustworthiness will prevail in the end. You can’t build a strong business, or strong team without trust, and trust is built on relationships, and relationships are built on delivering what you say you will.

Q: What motivates you in life?
A: I love to work with energetic, motivated people and build teams that achieve extraordinary things. I’m a bit of a technology geek at heart, and love to see how new technology can change the way people do things. Investing in property is partly about having the right information at your disposal to make good decisions and the team here at Property Partner have done an amazing job in bringing the crucial information on each investment to light.

Q: What is it about Property Partner that inspires you?
A: Property is a huge asset class and is so important for investors to have exposure to since it’s recognised as one of the best ways to protect against inflation and get stable, long term growth. But it remains difficult to access, and often with unknown risk due to investors exposure to a small number of properties. It’s also very difficult to exit.

Property Partner provides investment opportunities selected by professional property investors, and solves the issues of how to diversify and exit via its trading platform.

Q: Run us through what your typical day has been like at Property Partner so far.
A: Days at Property Partner pass very quickly – it’s definitely a fast paced environment. I generally get in soon after 8am and have an hour or so of thinking time before the day kicks off properly. At 09:50 the leadership team have our daily stand up meeting where we outline our tasks for the day, and discuss any knotty issues. Following that, my day is usually filled with meetings ranging from Investment Committee, where we scrutinise deals we are bringing to the platform, to speaking with sales team or customers. There are usually meetings with outside parties to push forward business relationships or opportunities. I usually end the day with an hour of email and if I’m lucky I get away at 6:30 or 7pm.

Q: Tell us something about yourself which we don’t know.
A: I’ve been a keen sailor since a young age and have sailed both offshore and in coastal waters. My offshore sailing included two transatlantic crossings in a 35 foot boat and my coastal sailing included representing Ireland in the Olympic Games in 1996. Participating in the Olympics was an amazing experience but did require 3 years of hard practise to achieve the qualification. However this did enable me to compete in many amazing sailing venues in USA, Canada, Finland, Portugal, Sweden and Italy amongst others.