NEW YORK—JLL announced that Senior Managing Director Kevin M. Davis has been named Americas CEO of its Hotels & Hospitality division. Davis, who leads JLL’s Hotel Investment Banking group, brings over 20 years of hospitality and capital markets experience to the role. Since joining JLL in 2013, he has been involved in more than $20 billion of hotel debt and equity financings.
With a background in capital markets, he spent 13 years prior to JLL working in the commercial real estate groups at Merrill Lynch and UBS, in addition to co-founding a debt fund business following the Financial Crisis. In these prior roles, he executed over $10 billion of transactions in hospitality, multi-housing, retail, office, and industrial assets. Previously, he worked as an attorney on Capitol Hill, where he served as a policy advisor to members of the House and Senate Banking Committees. Widely recognized in the hospitality industry, Kevin Davis won the 2019 Jack A. Shaffer Financial Advisor of the Year Award at the American Lodging Investment Summit, which honors industry leaders that showcase outstanding ability to foster client relationships and close deals that benefit both parties in a transaction.
This appointment underscores the growing importance to JLL of its Capital Markets business and reinforces JLL’s commitment to be the world’s most strategic, creative, and connected real estate capital advisor.
“Having the ability to think holistically about a situation and provide advice that contemplates all potential paths to maximize value for our clients is key to maintaining our competitive advantage. Kevin brings a deep understanding of the entire capital structure and has been involved in every aspect of our business, including sales, financings, joint venture equity placement, restructurings, recapitalizations, loan sales, and UCC foreclosures,” said Hotels & Hospitality Global CEO Gilda Perez-Alvarado.
“In a world where real estate investment is becoming more complex and lines are being blurred across asset classes, we recognize the importance of having a broader Capital Markets product offering for our hospitality clients,” added Capital Markets Americas CEO Mark Gibson.
Furthermore, to support the group’s national growth strategy, Jeffrey Davis, a senior managing director, will now, in addition to his current role as co-head of U.S. Investment Sales Advisory, oversee new business development for Hotels & Hospitality in the United States, with a particular focus on deepening engagement and connectivity with large institutional clients.
“Jeff is one of the best-known and well-respected transaction advisors in the United States. His track record in developing client relationships, closing deals, and his knowledge across all of the services offered on our national platform makes him the perfect fit to grow all aspects of JLL’s new business development in the United States” added Perez-Alvarado. “I’m tremendously excited about these key leadership appointments as we look to aggressively grow our business and build on our culture of collaboration, connectivity, and innovation.”
JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group has completed more transactions than any other hotels and hospitality real estate advisor over the last five years, totaling $83 billion worldwide. The group’s 350-strong global team in over 20 countries also closed more than 7,350 advisory, valuation and asset management assignments.
