Christopher Downing

Christopher Downing is the chair and the driving force behind IMI Official Partner company Vignale Capital, starting his property career in Docklands, London, with the UK’s largest house builder, before becoming the national land buyer to a UK family office, operating a strategy of secure medium-term growth.

Christopher moved to Russia in 1992, where he developed the first privately owned retail building in Moscow since 1917. He was subsequently appointed as deputy head of property for a large Russian bank, overseeing the facilities and asset management of the branches and assets of the bank in 182 cities and 11 time zones, he then held a senior management position in a Russian company where he was instrumental in the planning of six million square meters of office and logistics space within the Russian Federation and Ukraine, plus offices and a hotel in Moscow.

Moving back to the UK in early 2004, he focused on the build-out of student accommodation. He then acted on behalf of and traded social housing assets to real estate investment funds, ultimately creating a trading company with an annual turnover of over £90 million.

In 2020, he moved to Italy to acquire and develop luxury lifestyle hotels in Italy; post pandemic, he saw a gap in the “golden visa” market, namely the opportunity for investors to receive an Italian residence permit by investing into Italian hospitality through a property focused, regulated entity that provides investors with both income and growth within an institutional environment and a residence permit that allows visa free access to Italy and the EU. His vision, assisted by his professional advisers, has created Vignale Capital.