Aldo Attanasio d’Aponte

An early love of buildings

I grew up in Naples, a city where the buildings tell you who owned what, when, and how the money moved. I noticed them before I understood them. The understanding came later, in investment banking, where I learned to read a balance sheet, price a risk and sit through a long negotiation without needing it to end.

When I moved to London property I brought that discipline with me, and it shaped the firm I built. Arbitrage Group, founded in 2006, has only ever acted for the party acquiring or occupying. Not for sellers, not for landlords. In a market where nearly everyone is paid by the other side, that turned out to be a rare thing to offer.

Twenty years, mostly out of sight

Since 2006 the firm has acquired, developed and advised on more than £1.5 billion of property across Mayfair, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Kensington, Notting Hill, Covent Garden and Soho: 500 or more homes for private clients, 26 development schemes from Mayfair to St John’s Wood, and flagship stores for Italian and European houses including Prada, Miu Miu, Vivienne Westwood, Furla and Brandy Melville. Roughly four in five of the purchases were never publicly marketed.

The transaction I am asked about most is 16 Old Bond Street. In 2013 Prada wanted the building next to its store. It was not for sale, there was no agent and no listing; the work was in understanding the owner and building a proposition that was better for them than continuing to hold. It completed that December. I mention it not because it was the largest deal but because it is the clearest example of how I think the job should be done.

Almost all of our clients arrive by introduction. For twenty years I published nothing: no photographs, no opinions, not one line about a deal. Our work is discreet by nature and our clients prefer it so. I have started writing now because, twenty years on, I think I have something worth saying.

How I work

A property is one line on a wider balance sheet. I sit between the client’s private bank, tax adviser and solicitor so that their work points in the same direction, and I have described the role as that of a personal banker for property. The purchase price is the easiest number to see and one of the least complete; I want to understand what sits behind it. And sometimes the most useful thing an adviser can say is: not this one. Telling a client to wait costs me a fee. It is frequently the right advice.

Beyond the office

I am married and a committed father to four children. I enjoy cooking, art and travel, and I am happiest at a table somewhere on the Mediterranean, comparing what is on the plate with what I grew up eating in Naples. I support young adults, students and entrepreneurs through mentoring, internships at Arbitrage and speaking at universities and business schools about property, negotiation and building a firm from nothing.