London South Bank University

MBS School of Business

Lycee Dumont d'Urville - Toulon

Company Director at French Property Consulting

French Property Consulting is born out of a simple but powerful concept: to lead international investors in real estate in France to achieve their objectives and genuinely facilitate the whole process, from the property search to the key handover and everything in-between and beyond. One point of contact to manage them all and the client back at the centre of the system.
        Why would investors have to suffer being passed around several organisations with several contacts over several months, each with their own processes and language level? Why should they be stressed to face alone a very safe but yet very complex and regulated purchasing process? Why would they waste their time coordinating everything on their own to benefit from the promised tax advantages? Well, because the journey might be difficult, but France is still one of the best places in the world to invest and the tax breaks associated makes it definitely worthwhile. 
       Investing or owning a property in France should be a pleasant experience despite not being an "easy" one. We are here to take over the journey and guide you through, so it will become genuinely easy.
THIS IS WHAT WE PROPOSE...

French Property Consulting

Company Director

Athena Investor Relations was created as an offshoot of the Back Office to further answer the clients’ requirements but also to develop the company revenue streams. I set up the structure and established the key services while associating with key contacts. When I left the company, it included 4 staff over two countries and had generated over 2 years a turnover close to €600,000 with a service range from conveyancing to key handover and beyond.

Based on the success of the Back Office, it appeared that the clients were in need of further assistance after exchange particularly with setting up their rental management and the associated tax advantages, the liaison with property developers for progress reports and decoration, and issues with furnishing or/interior design. AIR was designed to provide a unique point of contact to facilitate the successful outcome all these issues.

By assembling a targeted network of experts in each field, I managed to create a full comprehensive service covering each demand as well as answering specific requests therefore saving time and hassle to our clients. Whether it was rental management, accounting, interior design, international removal, utilities management or even conflict resolution and negotiation with the developer, everything was covered.

With no marketing or external communication, by the time of my departure, AIR was managing nearly 100 clients with several external to Athena Advisers and was aiming for a target of €300,000 in 2019.

Athena Investor Relations branch of Athena Advisers

Director

I created the department 7 years ago and managed to morph a simple administrative support service into a fully-fledged unit within the company, providing B2C and B2B services for all the Athena Advisers’ offices. Dealing with the legal and administrative section of the business, it grew from basic conveyancing to provide advices on financing and purchase structuring while focusing on closing deals in the most efficient manner, my personal best being only 21 days from reservation to exchange.

Being 100% client focused and under my leadership, the Back Office always aspired to reach the complete satisfaction even in difficult cases. Over the years, it successfully closed more than €500 million euros worth of property deals with a worldwide client base.

From setting up all the processes and basic tools of operation to tailoring them to the rapid growth and expansion of the company, I managed to establish a strong support service, saving time and hassle to any investor purchasing with Athena Advisers. This fostered good reports and further business through more purchases or lead referrals.

Also, by integrating the Back Office with other departments and offices through streamlined processes, internal communication, proactive support to partners and the Salesforce CRM, I also generated further business development and improved the company efficiency over the 4 countries of operation: France, Portugal, The UK and Spain.

Athena Advisers - Property. Investment. Lifestyle.

Back Office Manager

Throughout the years, I worked with several public and private bodies to streamline the consulate processes to serve in the most efficient manner the needs of French citizens and corporations in the United Kingdom while promoting the French government actions.

My last role was to provide high quality administrative services to senior corporate officers, elite sportsmen and high profile French citizens based in the UK. I also represented the French Consulate at various official events and dealt with the media enquiries specific to the consulate. Finally I established deeper and more efficient relationships between the UK based French companies and the various French administrations represented in the London. 

Over the years, I also lead several other in-house projects on the internal and external communication of the consulate, its security systems and protocols, streamlining the distance application department and the work the French deputy consuls in the UK while improving its IT capability. Brought to successful completion, many of the results of these projects are still in place to this day.

Ministère des Affaires étrangères français

Consulate Personel - VIP And PR Manager

Over 2 years, I created, developed and managed the placement center from the Department of Tourism and Hospitality to the Arts and Humanities faculty (2004-2005) and up-scaling to university level (2005-2006). I successfully developed structures, processes and communication to support students in their search of professional experience and to develop a network fostering further opportunities. When I left 35% of the student population was in placement with more than 150 different companies in the United Kingdom and abroad.

By working with the various heads of departments and faculties, I established clear requirements for their students and develop tailored placements scheme with national and international corporations. I designed courses on how to prepare effective candidatures including to answer a job offer, to highlight skills on a CV, interview techniques and presentations but also professional behaviours in a work place.

I developed a strong recruitment network of in-house professionals and agencies to ensure that the students were regularly provided with high quality placement offers and also shared good practice with other education bodies at various professional conference as a keynote speaker. The placement center at London South Bank University still run on the basis I set up then.

Placement and Work Experience Project Manager

This consulting mission had for goals to study and potentially to transpose the London off-street parking management system, the use of public private partnership contracts and the implementation of an urban toll system like the congestion charge zone to Paris.

To successfully lead this mission, I gathered all possible data from various public and private bodies as well as arranged several field trips to other UK cities. I researched the law and processes in place in the various fields and compiled the final report with a complete risks analysis and recommendations on a potential implementation of an identical system.

I presented the results to Mr Denis Baupin who was at the time the elected member of Paris town hall in charge of transport as well as the senior corporate officers of the company. The political risk being too high in the run of the 2003 mayoral elections and the technology to expensive to acquire, it was decided to postpone the implementation of the plan I proposed.

Saemes

Independant Consultant- Project Leader

In a short period of time, I managed three major projects in three different areas of public affairs. 
The first project, Immeubles en Fetes 3rd edition, was a major nationwide event involving more than 500 towns and housing associations as well as several national media outlets to promote solidarity and conviviality among neighbours. 
The second was to actively manage two political campaigns at district level during the presidential and subsequent general elections in 2002. 
Finally, I managed several communication audits of various public bodies with recommendations to Mayors and council leaders to improve communication with the local communities, to promote a particular policy or to accompany structural or organisation changes.

Com'Publics

Communication Consultant- Project Manager

I coordinated internally and externally the production and implementation of the first central CRM of the company under Lotus Notes. The goals were to streamline the monitoring of all public utility contracts renewal over the French territory while networking and  recording the key stakeholders per city in order to improve the efficiency of the group commercial targeting.

I worked directly under the supervision of France commercial director, at the senior executive level, and I was responsible for the management of 3 teams in the commercial, IT and communication departments as well as 2 external contractors.

After mapping the business operations of Suez group over the French territory, I identify the main executives to gather information on ongoing contracts and key stakeholders. In the meantime, I worked on the CRM architecture, data management and reporting process as well as interface. Once the data and processing capacity were set, I organised the data clearing and input as well as the deployment and implementation of the system.

I presented the final project to France commercial director as well as some members of the executive board and it was successfully implemented in January 2002.

Benoit Froger 🏠