Knight Frank has expanded its data centres team with the hire of CBRE data centre solutions director Ben Stirk, who is joining as a partner and co-head of global data centres.
Stirk will lead the team alongside Stephen Beard to develop the firm’s presence in the sector. He has more than 15 years of experience in data centres, including nine at CBRE.
Before joining CBRE in 2012, Stirk worked at Cushman & Wakefield for five years, latterly as an account manager.
Knight Frank said it expects the European data centres market to mature and expand over the next year, with at least a 10% increase in cloud and wholesale take-up levels in 2021 “owing to further adoption and migration to public cloud in the short term”.
William Beardmore-Gray, global head of occupier services and commercial agency at Knight Frank, said: “[Stirk] will play a crucial role in further building our global remit, working closely with our international occupier and capital markets teams.
“Ben has stand-out experience of advising clients in over 100 data centre markets around the world, which places him in the unique position of being able to provide businesses with a technical delivery focus and expert technical advice.”
The news comes after Tom Glover and Mike Harrington left CBRE earlier this month to join JLL’s EMEA data centres team.
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