Knight Frank Australia has made two new appointments to its Occupier Services team in Western Australia, as it strengthens its division nationally. Theo Smyrniotis has been appointed to the role of Partner, Head of Occupier Services, WA, while Ken Henderson has been appointed as Director, Portfolio Management, Australia.

Mr Smyrniotis is a senior executive in the property industry with over 22 years domestic and international experience across multiple disciplines including corporate real estate, real estate advisory, property valuations, real estate development and property investment. The appointment of Mr Smyrniotis follows almost seven and half years in Valuation and Tenant Advisory at Colliers, WA.

Mr Henderson is a property professional with over 25 years of corporate real estate experience in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia Pacific Region.

His areas of specialised expertise include sales and leasing, property management, asset management and transactional acquisitions and disposals.

Ken has consulted to or worked in major global and national businesses operating in the media, engineering, resources, financial services, government, and telecommunications industries.

He has recently returned to Perth from London where he worked as a Director with CBRE in its Global Corporate Services business for the past three years, responsible for clients including Boeing and MSD/Merck Pharmaceutical.

Knight Frank Partner and Head of Western Australia Craig Dawson said both Theo and Ken would be outstanding additions to the Knight Frank business in Perth, further strengthening our consulting-led approach to the market.

“Both recruits have very extensive and well-rounded backgrounds in real estate, both in Australia and overseas, and their knowledge will be invaluable to our business by assisting us to provide the best possible service for our clients.”

Mr Dawson said the Perth occupier market has moved through the uncertainty of the COVID period better than most other markets, but local businesses were looking for strategic guidance in relation to occupation moving forward as changes to workplaces become permanent.

“Although WA occupiers have been impacted by the economic slowdown and there has been an imperative to manage costs, most corporates in WA were already running lean property footprints and weren’t caught with a lot of surplus space,” he said.

“What we are noticing in regards to long term change however is that WA occupiers are becoming even more discerning and strategic in their use of the property they occupy."

“They are now actively considering the impacts of flexible working on how space is occupied, the role of the office in maintaining corporate culture, collaboration and innovation, how multi-site portfolios are arranged and how lease flexibility is maximised."

“Given the interrelationship between these and many other factors, corporates are seeing the value in accessing integrated end-to-end occupier solutions to support them in this new environment.”