Josh Wilson, CFA
Senior Investment Manager, Stride Property
Tell us a bit about your role
I have a corporate finance and strategy development role at Stride. We are a listed commercial real estate business which also has a funds management component, where we manage three other funds. This differentiates us from the others in the market.
What are some of your career highlights so far?
I moved to Stride from a Big 4 tax and business advisory role six years ago, a change that took me from backwards-looking financial statements and tax returns to forward-looking investment decision making where I have genuine influence on the direction of our businesses. This was a great decision, although I cannot overstate how useful it is to have a strong grasp of debits and credits, and tax.
I’ve been deeply involved in the establishment of new funds including our unlisted industrial fund which has doubled in size over three years, and the IPO of our office portfolio, Fabric (although the IPO was withdrawn due to market conditions at the time). Another significant part of my role I love is ECM/DCM activity like equity capital raises, DRPs, share buybacks and retail bond issuances, as well as exploring M&A opportunities. Inhouse investment banking, sort of.
What do you like most about your job/industry?
The variety of work means it’s consistently stimulating, and across the funds there’s always something going on. I work over all the major commercial property asset classes, and have been fortunate to support on some beautiful award winning development projects around the country.
When you work in the property industry, you take a whole new appreciation of the built environment around you. You really take notice of what is going on: how busy is the CBD today, what is happening at that empty site, how’s that new shop or restaurant going?
What are your interests outside work?
My partner and I love to go out for long walks around Auckland on the weekends, and travel outside New Zealand as much as possible for holidays. I am a huge trance fan, and Auckland has been lucky enough to get two big names recently; Solarstone and Jorn Van Deynhoven.
And at the moment I am studying for the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing so that is taking up a bit of time. But I do recommend it, it is super interesting.
Can you recommend some good reading and/or viewing?
The getAbstract tool you get access to through the CFA Institute is great. 5-15 minute book summaries getAbstract (cfainstitute.org)
Make a prediction for 2028
There won’t be such a thing as green bonds and green lending, they will be informally labelled brown bonds and brown lending i.e. if E, S and G isn’t at the forefront of your business, expect to pay significantly more for debt (if you can even get it).
