Olivier Jollin and the French-origin advisory principals quietly steering institutional real estate mandates across Europe

European investment volumes set the stage for advisory leadership shifts

European real estate investment reached €52.6 billion in the first quarter of 2026, led by the Living and Healthcare sectors, according to CBRE. The second quarter maintained momentum, with volumes climbing to €53 billion, representing a modest year-on-year increase, according to Savills. For the full year, Savills forecasts European real estate investment volumes to grow by approximately 16%.

Within this recovering landscape, a cohort of French-origin and French-adjacent advisory principals is positioning itself at the centre of institutional mandate flows. Olivier Jollin, Juan de la Peña, David Pralong, and Eric Groven each occupy distinct strategic nodes across France, Spain, and broader Western Europe, and their recent appointments and platform expansions offer a revealing map of where institutional capital is heading.

GRI Institute, which convenes senior real estate and infrastructure leaders across Europe, has observed growing interest among its members in understanding the advisory structures and principal networks that channel cross-border capital. The profiles below examine four figures whose strategic moves illuminate the current direction of the market.

Who is Olivier Jollin, and what does his appointment at Stoneweg signal for France?

Olivier Jollin was appointed as president of Stoneweg's French platform to oversee strategic growth initiatives in the country, according to Real Asset Insight (November 2025). The appointment places Jollin at the helm of a national expansion by Stoneweg, a Geneva-headquartered investment manager with a diversified European portfolio spanning residential, logistics, and hospitality assets.

Stoneweg's decision to elevate a dedicated French president signals the firm's conviction that France remains a structurally attractive destination for institutional capital deployment. The French market combines deep liquidity, a large institutional tenant base, and a regulatory environment that, while complex, rewards operators with local expertise.

Jollin's mandate is strategic rather than purely transactional. As president, his role encompasses the full spectrum of platform development, from sourcing and structuring to asset management and investor relations. For institutional allocators seeking exposure to French real estate through mandates rather than direct acquisition, advisory principals like Jollin serve as essential intermediaries. They translate local market intelligence into executable strategies that meet the risk-return profiles demanded by pension funds, sovereign wealth vehicles, and insurance companies.

The appointment also reflects a broader trend. European investment managers are increasingly localising their leadership structures rather than managing continental portfolios from a single headquarters. This decentralisation improves deal access, regulatory navigation, and tenant relationships, all factors that directly affect asset performance.

How are Juan de la Peña and Amira shaping Spanish institutional mandates?

Juan de la Peña is the CEO and founder of Amira Real Estate Asset Management, which manages real estate investments in Spain for funds, family offices, and private investors, according to the firm's own disclosures. His platform occupies a specific niche: bridging international institutional capital with Spanish real estate opportunities through a locally embedded asset management structure.

Spain's real estate market has attracted sustained interest from cross-border investors drawn by yield spreads relative to core Northern European markets, demographic tailwinds in key cities like Madrid and Barcelona, and a growing logistics sector supported by Iberian supply chain reconfiguration. De la Peña's Amira operates at the intersection of these dynamics, providing the advisory and asset management layer that international allocators require to deploy capital efficiently in a market where local relationships remain decisive.

The advisory principal model that de la Peña represents is particularly important in Southern European markets. Unlike the UK or Germany, where large institutional platforms dominate deal flow, Spain's investment market retains a significant role for specialised, founder-led advisory firms that combine fiduciary rigour with entrepreneurial agility. For family offices and mid-sized funds seeking Spanish exposure without establishing proprietary local teams, principals like de la Peña function as strategic partners rather than mere service providers.

Across GRI Institute's European convenings, discussions among members increasingly focus on how advisory structures in Southern Europe are evolving to accommodate larger institutional ticket sizes while preserving the local market knowledge that generates alpha.

David Pralong and Maya Capital: deploying across Western Europe

David Pralong is the founder and Managing Partner of Maya Capital, a European real estate investment firm that has deployed significant capital across Western Europe, according to the firm. Maya Capital's geographic scope, spanning multiple Western European jurisdictions, positions Pralong as one of the more broadly active principals in the current cycle.

The multi-country approach carries inherent complexity. Each jurisdiction presents distinct regulatory frameworks, tax structures, tenant law regimes, and capital market dynamics. Principals who operate across borders must maintain deep local networks while applying a consistent investment discipline that satisfies institutional investors accustomed to standardised reporting and governance. Pralong's ability to sustain this balance across Western Europe speaks to a specific skillset that the market values highly, particularly as cross-border capital flows accelerate amid the recovery.

Maya Capital's positioning also reflects the growing appetite among European institutional investors for diversified mandates that spread geographic and sector risk. Rather than concentrating capital in a single country, allocators increasingly favour platforms that can identify relative value across markets and rotate capital accordingly. Advisory principals who can credibly offer this multi-market capability occupy a structurally advantaged position in the current fundraising environment.

Eric Groven and the institutional weight of Societe Generale's real estate operations

Eric Groven serves as the Head of Real Estate for Societe Generale's French retail banking networks and President of SOGEPROM, the bank's real estate development branch, according to Societe Generale. His dual role sits at the intersection of banking, development, and institutional real estate, a combination that carries significant influence over capital allocation in France.

SOGEPROM's activities span residential and mixed-use development across France, leveraging Societe Generale's balance sheet strength and banking relationships. Groven's position gives him visibility into both the supply side of the French market, through development pipeline management, and the demand side, through the bank's retail and institutional client networks.

The integration of real estate development within a major banking group creates a distinctive model. It allows development decisions to be informed by real-time lending data, tenant demand signals, and macroeconomic analysis that standalone developers may lack. For institutional investors, this integration offers a layer of risk mitigation, since the development platform benefits from the parent bank's credit analysis capabilities and balance sheet support.

What regulatory forces are shaping these principals' strategies in 2026?

Two legislative developments are exerting particular influence on advisory strategies across Europe.

The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) required Member States to transpose new rules by May 2026. The directive targets the renovation of the 16% worst-performing non-residential buildings by 2030 and defines national trajectories to reduce primary residential energy consumption. For principals like Jollin and Groven, operating within the French market, the EPBD transposition creates both compliance obligations and investment opportunities. Assets requiring deep renovation to meet new energy performance standards represent value-add targets for capital with the patience and expertise to execute complex refurbishment programmes.

Every principal operating in European real estate today must integrate EPBD compliance into underwriting models, since failure to meet energy performance trajectories will erode asset values and restrict tenant demand.

In France specifically, the SVE Law (loi de simplification de la vie économique), adopted by the French Parliament on 15 April 2026, introduces a dedicated legal category for large-scale data centres considered of strategic importance (PINMs), accelerating urban planning authorisations and development. This legislation responds to surging demand for data centre capacity driven by artificial intelligence workloads. CBRE projects that European vacancy in data centres will compress to a record low by the end of 2026, driven by AI-related demand but constrained by grid bottlenecks.

The SVE Law positions France as a proactive jurisdiction for data centre development, a factor that principals with diversified mandates, such as Pralong at Maya Capital, may incorporate into cross-border allocation strategies.

The advisory principal as institutional infrastructure

The figures profiled here, Olivier Jollin at Stoneweg, Juan de la Peña at Amira, David Pralong at Maya Capital, and Eric Groven at Societe Generale and SOGEPROM, represent more than individual career trajectories. They constitute the advisory infrastructure through which institutional capital flows into European real estate.

As the market moves through a recovery characterised by selective capital deployment and heightened regulatory complexity, the role of the advisory principal grows in strategic importance. These individuals combine local market access, fiduciary credibility, and cross-border perspective in ways that neither large platform managers nor purely local operators can replicate alone.

GRI Institute continues to track the evolution of these advisory networks across its European membership, recognising that understanding who steers mandates is as important as understanding where capital is deployed.