With 30 years of experience in hotel corporate finance and asset management, Ms. Ward’s primary area of concentration is providing hotel lead advisory services across the complete hotel investment and ownership cycle.

Ms. Ward has worked as both a principal for large corporate and private equity investors and as an advisor with clients across the range of global hotel companies, including hotel investors, developers, owners, operators and asset managers.

Prior to joining A&M, Ms. Ward was UK Hotels leader for 12 years in the deals advisory practice at PwC and responsible for their UK Hotel Forecast Report. She served as lead advisor across a range of hotel deals, including sell-side, buy-side, equity-raise and P2P transactions. Her most notable deals included serving as lead advisor for Marriott’s take private of Elegant Hotels plc; rule three lead advisor to SafeStay plc; and lead advisor on joint venture equity-raises for a Mediterranean hotel resort acquisition and redevelopment, setting up an external hotel fund for a global tour operator and acquiring a target group of 16 U.K. Principal Hayley hotels.

Previously, Ms. Ward served as U.K./Europe head of transactions and asset management across numerous hotel owners, including Millennium & Copthorne, Cedar Capital Partners, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC and Westmont Hospitality Group. Her responsibilities across these roles included portfolio optimization strategies for highest return on investment; individual hotel strategic, branding and capex strategies for owned hotels and potential hotel acquisitions; overseeing significant major renovations in IHG-owned InterContinental Hotels across Western Europe; and the acquisition of £1+ billion and the sale of £2+ billion hotels through a number of single and portfolio deals.

Ms. Ward earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry (honours) from Manchester University. A U.K. national, she is a regular presenter, moderator and panelist for leading hotel sector conferences across the U.K./Europe; an ACA qualified Chartered Accountant; and a member of ICAEW and IHIC.