Former Countrywide chief executive and chairman Grenville Turner has been appointed as chairperson of the BidX1 board.
Turner was CEO of Countrywide, from 2007 to 2014, during which time he took the group private and subsequently oversaw its return to the public market in 2013 as part of a major IPO.
Prior to that, Turner held several executive roles at Halifax Bank of Scotland plc, including chief executive of business-to-business banking and chief executive of Intelligent Finance.
BidX1, a digital property investment platform, was first established in Dublin in 2011, before launching in the UK in 2018.
Turner’s appointment as chairperson comes as BidX1 gears up for another phase of growth.
Turner, who has been on the boards of Rightmove, Zoopla, US realtor Realogy and Sainsburys Bank, is currently non-executive chairman of YOPA, the hybrid online estate agency. He joins existing board members Stephen McCarthy, who founded BidX1 in 2011, and Lindsey McMurray, managing partner at private equity firm Pollen Street Capital, which made a strategic investment in BidX1 in 2018 as the Company began to expand internationally, as well as James Scott, a Partner at Pollen Street.
Vicente Vázquez Bouza, Partner in Corporate Finance & Restructuring at Oliver Wyman, and Daniele Della Seta, Head of M&A and Strategic Finance at doValue, joined BidX1’s board of directors following the recent investments.
Turner said: “BidX1’s growth trajectory has been impressive, and that growth is underpinned by equally impressive fundamentals: an experienced management team, deep property sector expertise and a digital-first model which puts transparency, efficiency and user-experience at its core.”
Michael Murphy, chief executive officer at BidX1, commented: “We’re delighted to welcome such an experienced and respected senior executive to our board. BidX1 will benefit from Grenville’s extensive experience in the property, PropTech and retail banking sectors at both executive and board levels, where his strategic vision and digital acumen have helped so many businesses achieve their growth potential.
“Grenville’s perspective will be invaluable as we seek to identify new opportunities in existing and new markets and continue to scale our platform,” he added.
He hired Alison Platt. Even the great and the good get it wrong.
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I’d suggest Grenville Turner was a very hard act for anyone to follow and it was investor influenced group-think about every industry sector getting ubered that facilitated the flawed retail strategies that undermined everything Mr. Turner had built up.
His ‘keep it #local’ succession system was a very sound and sustainable strategy, one that others are now deploying.
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I met Grenville a few times when I worked for CWD back in the day seemed a decent enough bloke and very approachable for us mere mortal RM’s. BUT he still hired Alison Platt prior to his departure and she then booted Bob Scarff almost immediately on her arrival and replaced him with I seem to remember a lady from Car Phone warehouse as MD and the rest is now consigned to the history books as how not to run an Estate Agency business. I don’t think Grenville has ever explained his reasons for hiring a CEO with absolutely no experience within the industry whatsoever and I guess we may never know.
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At the time of Grenvilles appointment I was a top performing FSD with CWD. Previously I was an Operations Director involved in a management buyout of the fated Cornerstone bunch.
The first thing that I noticed about Harrys introduction was “I met him in the stock exchange” Now lets be clear on Grenvilles role at Halifax. He was head of the BDMs which in itself is not a particularly senior position, Its certainly not a board position at Halifax so you wonder why he would be in the stock exchange.
Not long after his appointment we (the MDs & FSDs had a meeting where grenville made a presentation which was all finance based but he had to dash off to the …you guessed it to the stock exchange.
During his tenure his input at least appeared to be someone who was learning a new role as intermediary with the private equity company. A role for which he had zero experience. Alison Platt was a colleague of his in the Foreign and commonwealth office.
So my reaction is that this is a guy who is big wigging and credit to him he pulled it off, until of course it all came home to roost.
Oh yeh forgot about that…it did all come home to roost. As they say its not what you know but who you know.
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