As a New Year and indeed decade approaches, there is growing consensus that Europe’s real estate market is entering the last stages of the current investment cycle. The US vs. China trade war, Brexit and geopolitical risks in the Middle East have contributed to a slowdown by generating market uncertainty over the last year. Although Europe’s economy may avoid recession, growth is widely expected to remain subdued over the next 12 to 18 months and there are lingering questions about how much further the cycle has to run. Rosanna Woods, UK Managing Director at Drooms, explores the future of the real estate industry in Europe.
For general partners (GPs), investing huge amounts of capital now comes with heightened risks. They are paying extra costs and looking to capture value that may not materialise post-close. To address this, Rosanna Woods, UK Managing Director at Drooms, suggests that the most effective GPs are scaling up their strategies by investing in diligence.
Banks are increasingly behaving like FinTechs, and some have even started partnering with them. The digital transformation, in which FinTechs have played a prominent role, has brought with it new cognitive technologies and macro forces such as blockchain and the digital experience, which are continuously shaping all areas of banking.
While the political and economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit continues, one thing remains certain - technological innovation will continue to disrupt the financial services industry.
The legal industry faces ever-increasing demands from clients for faster services and accurate results. An obvious response is to adopt the time-saving and efficiency-driving technologies that are widely available and being incorporated into many other industries.
Lawyers currently face a technology learning curve that is challenging the procedural status quo of the due diligence processes they apply to mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Drooms, Europe’s leading virtual data room provider, recently introduced the first virtual data room with blockchain technology. This combined with its use of artificial intelligence has won the company a 2018 European Property Finance Award in the Innovator of the Year category.
Blockchain has been synonymous with crypto currencies for some time but its range of applications and roles in the wider digital transformation are now much more fully understood. This is certainly true of the financial industry, which is gradually shaking off its legacy systems and incorporating this revolutionary technology into an ever-growing number of uses.
