The FINANCIAL -- The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) on October 28 announced the creation of its first Advisory Board focused on a specific academic area - Real Estate (Wednesday 28 October).

Francis Salway, chief executive of Land Securities, will chair the board, which will help forge sustainable links between LSE's academic output and the real estate industry.

The board will support LSE's MSc in Real Estate Economics and Finance (REEF). It will review and advise on the course objectives with the aim of ensuring that its teaching is as relevant as possible to what is going on in the real estate industry. 

As a conduit between real estate professionals and academics the board will also provide wider and more strategic support, helping LSE to develop new courses in real estate as well as advise on research angles in real estate economics, finance and development; raise funding to support research and create new posts; and help the School develop short, high level 'executive' courses for professionals in the industry.

Professor Paul Cheshire said: "We are and intend to remain academically oriented and motivated but we do want our research and teaching to be useful. We hope that the board will forge closer and lasting links between LSE and the real estate industry but that it will also have a significant longer term purpose in enabling us to develop new activities in London, which is very much the main site of the commercial real estate industry in Europe. We have been working on the creation of the Board for sometime and launching it now happens to chime nicely with government policy urging universities to work more closely with industry."

Francis Salway, chief executive of Land Securities, said: "I strongly believe that topical and timely academic research can assist property practitioners on decision making - to capture emerging trends and to manage risk and pricing of risk more effectively.  The Advisory Board will create an effective forum for liaison between leading academics at the LSE and practitioners to ensure that this is achieved."

The establishment of the Advisory Board has been supported by the Investment Property Forum's Educational Trust and very high level people from the property industry will be represented on the Advisory Board. 

It will be chaired by Francis Salway, chief executive of Land Securities, the largest property company in the UK and a former president of British Property Federation, the main representative organisation for real estate in the UK.

Other Board members are Richard Barkham, group research director at Grosvenor; Guy Morrell, head of Multimanager, HSVC Global Asset Management; Burak Kaplanoglu, delivery programme director, Athletes Village, London 2012 Olympic Games for Stratford Lend Lease UK; Eric Linden, associate director, CB Richard Ellis; and Professor Paul Cheshire and Dr Christian Hilber of LSE. Burak Kaplanoglu and Eric Linden are alumni of the MSc REEF degree.

The MSc Real Estate Economics and Finance (REEF) is a one year full time master's programme offered by the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE and focuses on the relevant analytical skills in economics and finance applied to the fundamentals of real estate markets.

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