Sherry Fitz pays €8m for London agency

Estate Agencies: The Sherry FitzGerald Group has paid €8 million for a controlling interest in a London estate agency chain, Marsh & Parsons.

The move will come as a major surprise in the Irish property market, where the leading players have been concentrating on extending their national network.

The group, controlled by Mark FitzGerald, is the first in Ireland to move into the UK market by taking direct control of a London agency.

Marsh & Parsons, which handles residential property only, has seven branches in central London, including offices in Knightsbridge and Chelsea.

Sherry FitzGerald will have over 70 per cent of the equity in the firm, with the balance being held by a newly appointed managing director, Peter Rollings, who previously ran Foxton's, London's biggest estate agency chain.

New directors Finbar Jones, who joins the company from AIB Investment and Wealth Management, and Liza Jane Kelly, a former Sherry FitzGerald negotiator who has been based in London with Hamptons, will share the balance of the equity with Mr Rollings.

Marsh & Parsons is a blue blood firm with a 150-year history. It specialises in central London mansion block property with average prices of £500,000 to £600,000.

The move by Sherry FitzGerald comes at a time when Irish investors are major players in the UK market, both for commercial and residential property. In London, Irish buyers are second only to the Americans in the buy-to-let residential market.

The company plans to grow this market and, according to Peter Rollings, about 20 per cent of the company's business will come from Irish investors over the next three years.

He plans to set up a new property management and lettings business within the company to attract investors keen to buy apartments and houses in central London and rent them out, for both long and short- term lets.

"The positive relationship that now exists between Britain and Ireland, coupled with Ireland's spectacular economic growth over the past 10 years, has led to significant Irish investment in the British property market in recent years," he said.

"Our new business is in a position to match quality London property with a growing number of active Irish investors."