Built on Experience. Driven by a Team.
LADY MICHELLE DE HAVILLAND, Chief Executive Officer
Inspiring Woman of The Year - Commercial 2024 nominee - Property Week 2024
CEO of the Year 2020 - Property Consulting
CEO Of the Year 2019 - UK Property Services
Michelle is one of the most respected & well-connected figures in international real estate. With more than 25 years of senior leadership experience, she has held directorial positions at some of the industry’s most prestigious firms — including HOK, Woods Bagot, Manhattan Loft Corporation, LandSec, Dalian Wanda, YOO, Sellar, and Sotheby’s International Realty UK.
Her career has spanned the full spectrum of real estate disciplines: from management consulting and design strategy, through development and asset management, to capital markets, marketing, and international brokerage. She has personally advised on and contributed to more than 50 iconic buildings and developments worldwide, including The Shard, 20 Fenchurch Street (The Walkie Talkie), One Nine Elms, The Stratford, the Fulham Football Club redevelopment, and the revitalisation of Victoria in London.
Internationally, Michelle advised on the first branded residences in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and has delivered residential, hospitality, and mixed-use projects across India, North America, Europe, China, Canada, Russia, and the GCC.
A recognised television personality and media commentator, Michelle is frequently cited in the international press on matters of real estate investment, development and market trends — earning her the distinction of being described as one of the “most important women in property.” She is a sought-after keynote speaker and a trusted board advisor and executive coach.
She is a University of Cambridge alumna. She studied Psychology and Mass Communications at University, complemented by a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Administration, and she holds a Coaching Certification and accreditation from the Association for Coaching and a Fitness Qualification from the American Fitness Association.
"Collaboration serves as the cement of any successful business"
Graham Stuart, Chief Financial Officer
Graham Stuart brings more than four decades of experience in real estate finance, corporate strategy and management consulting to his role as Chief Financial Officer of BlackGate.
Born and raised in Aberdeen, Graham is of old Scottish descent with roots in the north-east that shaped his early career in the rigorous tradition of Scottish professional services. A chartered accountant and Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), he trained at one of Scotland’s leading professional firms before building a distinguished career across two of the world’s most demanding financial markets.
At Lehman Brothers in New York, Graham served as a senior member of the real estate finance division, structuring complex debt and equity instruments for institutional-grade property investments across North America. His tenure at Lehman during the bank’s most active period in real estate capital markets gave him first-hand experience of structured finance at the highest level of complexity and scale — and an intimate understanding of the systemic risks that undisciplined leverage creates, lessons that inform his conservative and forensic approach to financial governance today.
Returning to London, Graham held finance and strategy positions at Xchanging, where he was responsible for financial planning and analysis, operational cost management, and commercial strategy across the firm’s outsourced services portfolio. His work at Xchanging deepened his expertise in management consulting and operational transformation — disciplines he now applies to BlackGate’s real estate advisory practice.
Graham’s consulting career spans strategic financial advisory, operational restructuring, capital formation, and corporate governance across the real estate and wider built environment sectors. He has advised on development financing structures, portfolio-level capital strategy, investment memoranda preparation and the financial due diligence processes that underpin major acquisition and disposition decisions.
His experience encompasses both principal-side finance — managing P&L, balance sheet risk, and investor reporting — and advisory-side consulting, including structuring capital raises, modelling risk-adjusted returns, and advising boards on financial governance and fiduciary responsibility.
Graham holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from London Business School, where he specialised in corporate finance and strategy, and a Bachelor of Accountancy from the University of Aberdeen. His professional qualifications include Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (CA, ICAS), membership of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), and associate membership of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS, AssocRICS) — reflecting his rare fluency across accounting, management, and property-specific financial disciplines.
Graham also serves as a Trustee of the MacLeod de Havilland Trust.
Now based in Scotland, his combination of Wall Street structuring experience, City of London advisory practice, and deep understanding of both real estate financial modelling and management consulting methodology makes him a seasoned veteran whose judgement has been tested across market cycles, across continents, and across the full spectrum of real estate risk. He brings to BlackGate the kind of hard-won perspective that only decades at the sharp end of real estate finance can produce.
The BlackGate Network
Beyond our core leadership, BlackGate operates through a carefully assembled network of senior professionals and specialist partners. This model allows us to scale our capabilities to match the demands of each engagement — from single-asset advisory to multi-jurisdictional development programmes — without carrying a permanent overhead that inflates client costs.
Our network includes senior practitioners in: real estate investment and fund management, architecture and urban design, planning and consenting, financial modelling and valuation, legal and tax structuring, branding and creative direction, digital marketing and technology, ESG and sustainability consulting.