Co-head of M.Stanley Real Estate to step down

John Carrafiell, joint global head of Morgan Stanley Real Estate (MS.N), is stepping down from his role in January, a spokesman said on Monday.

Carrafiell, who took a leading role in the 1.7 billion pound

($2.51 billion) acquisition of London's Canary Wharf business district in 2004 - Britain's biggest-ever property deal - will hand over his duties to New York-based co-head Sonny Kalsi next month.

Carrafiell's next career move is unclear but he will remain a senior adviser to the bank and continue to serve on the boards of Morgan Stanley-backed property companies including Canary Wharf Group, retail developer and investor Multi Corporation, German property company Deutsche Immobilien Chancen AG and Spanish property firm Grupo Lar.

Year of turmoil brought City grandees low

With two and a half trading days to go before Christmas, this week, instead of looking ahead, we are peering over our shoulders to work out who fared the best and was left behind in the London market in 2008.

Overall, it has been a year of losses: the FTSE 100 is down a depressing 33.6 per cent, while the FTSE 250 has lost over 41 per cent of its value since January. Recession and the paucity of credit have played havoc with stocks across the sectors. But some have managed to weather the storm better than others.

The banks fared the worst as writedowns went from bad to worse to unsustainable and wholesale funding dried up, forcing some of the grandest of City grandees to seek help from the taxpayer or find solace in the arms of a better-funded foreigner.

HBJ signs up Mishcons real estate partner

HBJ Gateley has been steadily expanding its London presence during the last year. In April, the firm recruited Simmons & Simmons partner Robert Bryan to head up its construction and engineering practice, while in May, HBJ completed a merger with shipping boutique Holmes Hardingham.

In August this year the firm bought in litigation partner Debbie Milne in Edinburgh from Biggart Baillie.

The firm has offices in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leicester, London, Nottingham, London and Dubai, with a total of 99 partners and 370 fee earners.

Are country estates still selling?

Marsh Court, a 10-bedroom house in Stockbridge, Hampshire, which came onto the market in April 2007 for £13m, was relaunched this June for £10m and sold for £11m in September. Grade I-listed Chicheley Hall, in Buckingham-shire, which went on sale in July last year for £9m, had its asking price slashed to £7m in January and went for close to that in June.

Many more sellers are retiring from the fight altogether, including the owners of Furzehill Place, in Surrey, once home to the Victorian explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. They have taken the property – guide price £7m – off the market after eight months.

It is clear that the City-boy-fuelled boom years are over – but what does the next year hold? “There’s still a lot of money out there, and a lot of people still have an ambition to buy a chunk of England,” says Mark Lawson, a director of The Buying Solution, an upmarket agency. He warns, however, that until buyers regain the confidence to spend and sellers are willing to brave the market, 2009 will be very tough indeed.