An impressive 40% of our Board joined the business as graduates
Savills award-winning programme sees graduates gain the training, experience and support they need to build fulfilling careers in real estate. We support all graduates through their training programmes and further career development with opportunities up to director level.
Nick Sweeney
Nick Sweeney started in Savills Wimborne in 1987 as a graduate land agent working with many superb land agents including Christopher and Anthony Panes, Anthony Lumby, Jim Thomson, Phil Gready. Savills Wimborne was a fantastic training environment managing many great estates in the South of England. Realising that management was not his strength Nick joined Rupert Sebag-Montefiore and the Salisbury Farms and Estates team in search of agency and deals. Nick became a Chartered Surveyor, having failed his exams at the first attempt and being diagnosed with dyslexia.
Swapping tweed for a suit Nick joined the London-based Country team led by Bertie Ross and Ian Stewart working alongside people such as Justin Marking, Crispin Holborow, Alex Lawson and Paul Finnegan. Nick began to focus on alternative uses such as the sale of golf courses, mega mansions and conference centres with Gary Witham with and Luke Hawkesbury. He picked up some great experience, ideas and clients sitting opposite the Office Agency team led by David Williams and Jeremy Bates.
His last Savills challenge was as director leading the Residential Development team with Dominic Grace, Tim Whitmey and Ed Lewis. Having worked with so many extraordinary leading professionals and varied markets and enjoying every moment for 22 years Nick left Savills in 2009 to set up by himself.
14 years later Nick has continued to use his Savills experience and contacts to advise clients, including joint agencies with Savills.
Philip Gready
As many of you will know Savills roots are in the soil having started as a firm of land surveyors in 1855 based in Chelmsford, Essex. This part of the business now manages in excess of 3 million acres of rural land throughout the UK and is heavily involved in the natural capital agenda.
You may think that carbon sequestration is a recent phenomenon but here we have two young land agents doing their bit in 1987 with a new plantation:
[Philip Gready FRICS FAAV and Alumni Nick Sweeney (first year Graduate) posing for an FW article on enhancing farm land values by judicious planting!]
Philip Gready joined Savills Wimborne on 1st September 1982. At that time it was the largest office outside of London and Savills was a partnership employing around 350 people. He became a chartered surveyor in 1984 and specialised in rural land management. Philip’s career includes a number of significant milestones; he was appointed head of the Wimborne office in 1991, joined the L&P board in 1999 and became the Head of the Southern region in 2000. When Savills UK was formed he became an Executive Director with responsibility for the Rural, Energy & Projects (REP) business. He stepped down from the board in December 2019 and became non-executive Chairman of REP.
Philip established the Savills Energy business and drove the expansion into solar and wind energy in the early noughties. He was also responsible for the acquisition of the Smiths Gore business in 2015 which has cemented Savills position as the agent of choice for all things rural.
Philip maintains that none of this could have been achieved without an outstanding team and board who have consistently backed balanced risk taking and seized new opportunities to grow the business. This has made for an incredibly exciting and fulfilling career with an amazing group of people.
S A V I L L S G R A D S C H E M E
For the 17th consecutive year, Savills have been named as The Times Property Graduate Employer of Choice 2023. This award reflects feedback from on campus interviews with over 10,000 final year students at the UK’s leading universities
Y O U M I G H T A L S O B E I N T E R E S T E D I N . . .
Other Alumni blogs and updates we think you will enjoy
S A V I L L S A L U M N I
F U T U R E L E A D E R S
The new Alumni initiative led by Maddy Maguire, Tom Fazakerley and Helen Gregory
The group will be an addition to the wider Savills Alumni Programme with the primary focus of creating a network of “Future Leaders” connected by their Savills backgrounds, whilst collectively bringing together the next generation of Savills alumni.
"The firm’s ethos of promoting growth and leadership at a younger age is refreshing and nurtures independent thinking". We catch up with with Alumni James Stoll, Asset Management Director at Cadogan."
"Arriving at Savills in 2018 with a background in commercial investment brokerage, it was a bit of a baptism of fire getting up to speed with the relative complexity of the development market."
