City Moves for 13 February – who’s switching jobs at Spotahome, Improbable and DAC Beachcroft?
Who’s on the move today?
Spotahome
Spotahome has appointed Cleo Sham, who helped grow Uber’s presence in China to become the ridesharing app’s largest market and led the EMEA operations for the American company, as chief operating officer (COO) to oversee the Madrid-based property technology company's global operations functions to spearhead fast-growth.Sham started up at Spotahome a few weeks ago, taking over from former COO and co-founder Bruno Bianchi who has taken on a newly-created role as Director of Strategy.
The appointment of the Uber exec reflects the growth and development of Spotahome, and the drive to take the startup to the next level of its growth. As the head of Uber’s Regional Operations EMEA, Sham was responsible for ridesharing operations in Uber’s 45 countries in EMEA. In the role of COO, Sham will oversee Spotahome’s performance, delivery and expansion and lead operations and customer experience. Sham helped to turn Guangzhou, home to 12m people in southern China, into Uber’s busiest city globally in less than two years. Her focus is now firmly set on the 8m-strong London market and nine other markets in Europe to turn the residential property rental market on its head.
Improbable
London-headquartered games technology company Improbable announced that Lincoln Wallen, former chief technology officer (CTO) of Dreamworks Animation and EA Mobile, has joined Improbable as CTO. Wallen will bring his experience in building and leading technology teams to Improbable, which has grown to more than 300 people and raised more than $600m in funding since its foundation in 2012.
Wallen’s appointment will see current CTO and co-founder Rob Whitehead assume the role of Chief Product Officer, where he will apply his experience to leading development of SpatialOS, Improbable’s cloud platform. Wallen is a visiting scholar in at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), and a non-executive director at Pearson and the Smith Institute.
DAC Beachcroft
DAC Beachcroft has bolstered its banking and finance offering with the hire of ex-Kirkland & Ellis partner Chris Wall as head of banking. Chris has broad banking and debt financing experience with a particular focus on leveraged financing transactions, corporate lending transactions, structured financings and restructuring situations acting for financial institutions, private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies, credit opportunity investors and listed corporates. His remit will see him take charge of the firm’s banking team including colleagues in the firm’s well-established real estate finance and corporate law practices.