The quiet principals: how ultra-discreet capital is reshaping European real estate allocations

European real estate investment climbed to €241 billion in 2025, up 13% from the previous year, according to CBRE. Behind that headline figure lies a structural shift that most market participants feel but few can precisely map: the rising influence of ultra-discreet, principal-led capital platforms that operate with minimal public visibility yet deploy significant firepower across the continent's core and value-add markets.

These are not sovereign wealth funds with press offices or listed REITs filing quarterly earnings. They are lean, conviction-driven vehicles led by individuals whose names circulate in closed deal rooms but rarely appear in public databases. Figures such as Max Hervé George, Eric Sasson, David Gluzman, and Eric Groven represent distinct but overlapping facets of this phenomenon, each commanding meaningful capital or strategic influence while maintaining a deliberate distance from the public gaze.

Understanding how these operators function, and what their growing prominence means for institutional investors, is now a first-order strategic question for the European real estate market.

Who are the principals behind Europe's stealth capital platforms?

The archetype of the ultra-discreet principal is neither new nor uniquely European. What has changed is the scale and sophistication with which these operators now compete against, and frequently outmanoeuvre, larger institutional peers.

Max Hervé George stands as perhaps the most striking example. As Founder and CEO of Icona Capital and Co-CEO of SWI Group, he now oversees a platform managing €11 billion in assets under management following the 2025 merger of Icona Capital and Stoneweg. That figure places SWI Group in a tier typically occupied by mid-to-large institutional managers, yet the platform operates with the agility and discretion characteristic of family-backed capital. The merger itself was emblematic: two complementary, private platforms combining to create a vehicle with pan-European reach and the capacity to act as both principal and co-investor across multiple asset classes.

Eric Sasson brings a different but equally instructive profile. A Founding Partner and CEO of RedTree Capital, Sasson draws on deep institutional experience, including prior roles at global alternative asset managers, to run highly targeted discretionary funds. RedTree Capital recently finalized the acquisition of 15 avenue de la Grande-Armée in Paris for its second discretionary fund, according to Business Immo. The transaction illustrates a pattern common among these principals: deploying capital into prime European locations through bespoke fund structures that attract sophisticated co-investors without the overhead or transparency obligations of larger, publicly marketed vehicles.

David Gluzman operates on the financing side of this ecosystem. As Senior Originator and Director at Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG, Gluzman facilitates major European real estate financing deals, serving as a critical link between discreet equity capital and the debt markets that enable it. The role of specialist lenders in enabling private acquisitions is frequently underestimated, yet without figures like Gluzman structuring bespoke financing solutions, many of the transactions completed by principal-led platforms would never reach closing.

Eric Groven occupies a distinct position at the nexus of institutional banking and real estate development. As Head of the Real Estate division at Societe Generale and President of SOGEPROM, Groven commands both the balance sheet of a major European bank and the operational capabilities of a vertically integrated development platform. His dual role enables a type of capital deployment that blurs the line between corporate real estate strategy and private wealth distribution, creating deal flow that rarely surfaces in conventional brokerage channels.

Taken together, these four figures represent the full value chain of discreet capital deployment: origination, equity investment, debt structuring, and institutional distribution, all operating with a degree of opacity that traditional market analysis struggles to penetrate.

How does stealth capital affect price discovery and co-investment access?

The growing weight of principal-led platforms in European real estate creates tangible consequences for the broader market. The most significant concern price discovery and competitive dynamics.

Private platforms led by single principals or small founding teams can move faster and with fewer governance constraints than institutional committees. They can underwrite risk on a conviction basis, accept complex deal structures, and close bilaterally without competitive auction processes. In a market where European real estate investment volumes are forecast to rise by around 18% in 2026, according to Savills, and where 89% of investors anticipate that their European real estate investment activity will either increase or hold steady, according to CBRE's European Investor Intentions Survey 2026, this speed and flexibility represent a durable competitive advantage.

The consequence is a growing bifurcation in deal access. Institutional limited partners, pension funds, and insurance companies increasingly find that the most attractive opportunities in sectors such as living, which accounted for the greatest share of European investment activity in 2025 at €53 billion according to CBRE, are being captured by principal-led vehicles before they reach broad market processes. For these institutional allocators, securing co-investment rights with discreet principals is becoming as strategically important as selecting fund managers through traditional due diligence processes.

This dynamic also complicates price discovery. When a significant share of transactions occurs off-market or through bilateral negotiations led by principals with proprietary deal flow, the resulting pricing signals are less visible to the broader market. Appraisers, index providers, and competing bidders operate with incomplete information, making accurate valuation more challenging and potentially creating pockets of mispricing.

The opacity is structural, not incidental. These principals maintain low visibility as a competitive strategy, and the regulatory environment, while evolving, does not yet require the level of disclosure that would fully illuminate their activities.

What regulatory shifts could reshape the operating environment for private capital?

Two major European regulatory developments bear directly on the operating environment for discreet capital platforms.

Directive (EU) 2024/927, commonly known as AIFMD II, amends the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive by establishing a dedicated regime for loan-originating alternative investment funds, updating delegation rules, and requiring at least two liquidity management tools for open-ended funds. Member States must implement the directive into national law by April 16, 2026. For principal-led platforms that operate through AIF structures, the new delegation and liquidity requirements may require operational adjustments, particularly where fund structures span multiple jurisdictions.

Regulation (EU) 2023/606, known as ELTIF 2.0, revamps the European Long-Term Investment Fund regime to broaden eligible assets, differentiate treatment for professional and retail investors, and harmonize interactions with MiFID suitability rules. The regulation is currently being integrated into national fund laws across Europe. ELTIF 2.0 is particularly relevant for principals seeking to broaden their investor base beyond traditional institutional channels while maintaining fund structures that accommodate long-hold, value-add strategies in sectors such as living and logistics.

Neither regulation will eliminate the structural advantages of discreet capital. Principal-led platforms will adapt, likely by professionalizing their fund structures while preserving the speed and conviction-based decision-making that define their competitive edge. The net effect may be to raise the operational bar for smaller operators while consolidating the position of scaled platforms like SWI Group that already meet institutional-grade governance standards.

Strategic implications for institutional allocators

The rise of principal-led capital platforms presents institutional investors with a clear strategic imperative: develop direct relationships with the principals themselves or accept diminished access to an expanding share of European deal flow.

Traditional intermediation models, in which brokers and placement agents connect allocators with fund managers, are less effective when the most active capital is deployed through vehicles that do not seek broad distribution. Institutional investors must instead participate in curated networks and platforms where principals engage with peers, share market intelligence, and source co-investment opportunities.

This is precisely the function that GRI Institute serves within the European real estate ecosystem. Through its member-driven events and research initiatives, GRI creates the conditions for institutional allocators and principal-led platforms to engage directly, bypassing the opacity that characterizes public market channels. The individuals generating strategic interest, from Max Hervé George and Eric Sasson to David Gluzman and Eric Groven, represent the type of leadership that shapes deal flow within these closed networks.

For allocators seeking exposure to Europe's recovery trajectory, the operational question is no longer simply which markets or sectors to target. It is which principals to align with, and through which structures, to access the transactions that increasingly define the market's risk-return frontier.

The quiet principals are reshaping European real estate not through volume alone, but through the structural advantage of discretion. Institutional investors who understand this shift, and position themselves accordingly, will capture outsized value in the cycle ahead.