Michael Smith has joined Wildstone Capital as its acquisition director.
He joins from JCDecaux, where he was partnership director for two years, before that, he was Director of Regional Development for eight years, working at JCDecaux for a total of 16 years.
Wildstone is the largest outdoor advertising consultancy in the UK, helping property owners including landlords, real estate businesses and local authorities to unlock opportunities for generating long-term income from outdoor advertising and add value to their property assets.
The Hammersmith-based firm specialises in designing and building large-format, digital billboards in super-premium places, such as at airports, shopping malls, and roadside on major routes.
Its expert team advises property owners about the best locations for advertising on-site and then sets about gaining the necessary planning permissions, as well as marketing the billboard sites and handling contract negotiations with media owners.
Following a recent joint venture with a US asset management company, Wildstone is on a GBP 1.5 billion acquisition trail to buy up thousands of billboard sites and potential sites across the UK and Europe, becoming a billboard owner in its own right.
Currently, there are a wide range of landlords of billboard sites, from a single advertising site on a privately-owned property to local authority ownership of a portfolio of sites across a city centre.