Mario joined Octopus Investments in 2010 as Head of Specialist Finance and chaired the Investment Committee for seven years. He was previously a board member of NM Rothschild & Sons. Mario read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Mat Oakley is head of European commercial property research at Savills. His primary areas of expertise relate to office, retail and leisure real estate, and he regularly advises investors and developers on opportunities and risks across these and other markets. Mat has been researching, analysing and occasionally correctly forecasting the commercial property market since the late 1980s.

David Hatcher is the Head of News & Finance at Estates Gazette. He was previously the Online Editor at Real Estate Capital and the Finance Editor of Property Week before that. David is very well respected in his field having held senior roles at a number top tier trade titles.

David was given an award from the International Building Press winning the Commercial Property Writer and overall IBP Journalist of the Year award in 2011. He was praised for his investigative journalism, in particular an expose of a controversial supermarket battle in East Kilbride.

Jean-Marc has 20 years of experience in the Property, Retail and Consumer Goods industries. Prior to PLATFORM_, he spent 7 years at the Executive Committee of The British Land Company PLC, joining as Head of Strategy in 2009 to set up the new department, and later on becoming Head of Residential.

Jean-Marc started his career at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), spending time across the Paris, Washington DC and London offices as a Principal.

Jean-Marc is a Non-Executive Director of Vivid, Hampshire’s largest provider of affordable homes with 30,000 homes in the South East. He also sits at the IPF Strategic Board and the BPF Residential Board.

He holds an MBA from Essec in Paris.

Rob is CEO of the multi-award-winning specialist distributor, Brightstar, which since launch has originated over £3 Billion of specialist property debt and won over 50 national industry awards including the 2016 ‘Gold Employer of the Year’ in the Global IiP Awards. Rob innovated the concept of stand along specialist teams in the distinct product areas of residential mortgages, BTL, second charges, bridging, commercial and development finance. Rob is a key voice within the sector and as such provides support to the FCA through ongoing discussions on current and future market issues.

Rob is a four times BMA winner and was voted Mortgage Personality of the Year at the Mortgage Strategy Awards in 2012.

Nick Sellman is a Birmingham based developer whose company ‘Urban Village’ has become synonymous with the Build to Rent sector in the UK. Having graduated from University with a degree in politics - he went on to establish his first internet business, the profits from which were used to build a high-yielding residential property portfolio across the West Midlands.

Nick has subsequently developed and managed a number of significant PRS schemes over recent years, working in conjunction with both UK institutional partners and overseas investment funds. His companies are now also engaged in the development of investments within the Health Care and Student sectors.

Duncan is an experienced entrepreneur with over thirty years’ experience as an owner-manager of a variety of businesses. Prior to being involved in property, he was co-founder and CEO of an IT and communications company specialising in leading-edge Managed Network Services to the public sector that was sold in 2004. Duncan has been involved in property development and investment for 14 years and takes a keen interest in protecting Greenfield through regionalised small urban renewal.

As Co-Founder and Group Managing Director, Duncan has led a small (but perfectly formed) team to deliver over 300 dwellings across multiple sites, mainly in the western Thames Valley. The Group is privately owned by four shareholders and has a current development pipeline of over £220m, including several joint-ventures. Past, current and future projects include small to medium size residential schemes, a large and complex 300,000ft2 mixed-use regeneration scheme and an early stage €40m tourism development in Lagos, Algarve.

Ressance is a house-builder based in Newbury in Berkshire with development activity in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and Middlesex. The Company carries out all aspects of development in-house, including land assembly, town planning, architectural design, construction, marketing, sales and after-sales customer care. Historically focused on Build-to-Sell, Ressance is now also exploring Build-to-Let.

Martin is Founder and Chief Executive of property investment and development company Inspired Asset Management and the homebuilding brand Inspired Homes. Inspired is now regarded as a leading micro living specialist with over 1,000 micro-units either completed or under construction. Martin has been a vocal advocate of micro living appearing in an ITV News feature last year and numerous articles in the press, making the case for space-efficient, affordable private homes. He was also non-executive chairman at The Collective, the UK’s largest co-living provider, and helped the British Property Federation to come up with industry-recognised definitions for micro-living, which covers compact living (self-contained smaller homes), shared living (house/ flat shares) and co-living (managed purpose-built developments with shared amenity space).

In addition to developing micro-apartments, Martin holds a large shared living portfolio and plans to establish a co-living REIT. He continues to campaign for the relaxation of the nationally described space standard on new-build homes as well as a co-living model within the Sui Generis category to make it easier to rent purpose-built student accommodation to non-students.