Centrus Communities supports professional cycling in West Africa – Tour de Lunsar

During our West Africa Challenge where 6 Centrus members rode 300km across Sierra Leone and Liberia to help support Street Child, a charity which supports vulnerable children and promotes education in these two and three other countries, we were grateful to the Lunsar Cycling team who looked after us throughout the trip so when the opportunity came up to support their efforts in promoting professional cycling in West Africa, we were very excited to join in and support where we could.

Tour de Lunsar, set up by Lunsar Cycling, is the biggest bike race in Sierra Leone displaying an exciting future of professional cycling in West Africa.

“Our project here is about helping young people enhance their lives through a bike…” We are very proud sponsors and glad to have supported such an incredible project.

We’re delighted that Centrus has partnered with us to deliver the Tour de Lunsar in 2021. Without their support we could not have created the biggest and best edition of the race to date, and we are hopeful of continuing the partnership into the future. We thank the team at Centrus, as well as their wider network of clients and colleagues from the bottom of our hearts.

Abdul Karim Kamara, CEO – Tour de Lunsar

It is a pleasure to support the incredible work that Karim and the wider Lunsar team have been doing. The Tour de Lunsar highlights the breadth of talent in the area and our commitment to see this event continue to grow. There has been an enormous amount of work from Karim and the Lunsar team and we are proud to be a part of this.

Jonathan Cawdron, Senior Associate – Centrus

Check out the photos and results from the race here: https://www.lunsarcycling.com/race-centre

Centrus expands equity credentials with new Head of Real Estate

Centrus has appointed a new Head of Real Estate, Omer Fazal, who joins from CBRE’s real estate investment banking team.

Omer’s arrival is part of a wider strategy underway at Centrus to grow its offering across residential, healthcare and operating real estate companies with a focus on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and equity capital raising services. Given Centrus’ market-leading position in the affordable housing sector in the UK and Ireland, this will be a key area of focus, in particular working with a range of affordable housing providers and developers to diversify sources of funding by accessing long-term, institutional equity capital.

The appointment comes at a time where there is an increasing level of interest from institutional capital in the affordable residential sector in the UK given its secure, low-risk income profile and potential for growth with positive demand drivers and a constrained supply of good quality, affordable and professionally managed homes. In addition, the investor market is also attracted by the affordable housing sector’s very strong ESG characteristics, highlighted by the new widely adopted Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing, which was published last year following a project initiated by Centrus and Peadbody.

“We are very pleased to welcome Omer to the Centrus team. This is a key part of an on-going strategy to build out our equity offering alongside our traditionally strong debt capabilities so that we can provide services to our clients right across the capital structure. As well as adding to our existing footprint in residential and social infrastructure, Omer’s focus on operational real estate will take us into another key real assets market.”

Phil Jenkins, Managing Director – Centrus

“This is an exciting time to be joining Centrus which is a clear market leader for Real Assets advisory across essential services sectors. With the ever-increasing demand from institutional investors for resilient income from robust business models, Centrus is in a unique place to provide differentiated, independent advice across residential, alternative and operational real estate sectors.”

Omer Fazal, Head of Real Estate – Centrus