Anyi Hobson is Senior Asset Manager at J. Safra Real Estate, where she has asset managed a pan-European office fund with an ESG emphasis since late 2020. What she loves most about asset management is that one minute you are poring over a contract, the next you are devising a marketing campaign and later that day, you are attending a technical meeting about achieving net zero carbon in the sustainable refurbishment of a building.
She has taken a circuitous route to asset management, both professionally and geographically.
After reading history at Yale University, Anyi went into banking in New York, where she was a credit analyst at UBS by day. By night, she studied fashion design, eventually working at the intersection of design, manufacturing and sales at Calvin Klein.
She left America in the early 1990s and since then, has combined her finance background and specialist knowledge with her ability to understand different markets, sectors and cultures.
Anyi speaks and works in five languages – English, Spanish, French, Italian and German – and has worked in about a dozen countries. Born in New York to Dominican parents, she has navigated between languages and cultures from an early age.
During her seven years in Germany, Anyi advised clients on pan-European retail, first independently and later for Swedish advisor Centrum Utveckling. She moved to the UK in the late 1990s, joining Insignia RE Advisors as part of a small team advising German open-ended funds on pan-European retail acquisitions. In 2004, she became an independent strategic advisor to companies such as CSAM and Inter IKEA Centre Group.
Anyi became an asset manager in 2014 at Commerz Real. Her portfolio included Victoria Square in Northern Ireland, an art deco redevelopments in Miami and London assets. Anyi joined the Grosvenor Estate in early 2019, asset managing the Mayfair Estate’s luxury goods district, where she gained invaluable experience in listed buildings, stakeholder management and ESG.
She is delighted to bring her commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity to the Mentoring Circle, following her extensive engagement in philanthropy, fundraising and education.
Anyi lives in Islington with her partner, their teenage son and a dog; her two stepchildren live in Madrid.
