Rob Stanton departs Barrenjoey

Barrenjoey’s founding partners (L-R) Chris Williams, John Cincotta, Brian Benari and Guy Fowler.

High-profile dealmaker Rob Stanton is leaving investment bank Barrenjoey almost four years after it carried out an aggressive raid on its competitors UBS and JPMorgan ahead of its launch.

DataRoom understands Mr Stanton, who heads up Barrenjoey’s Australia and New Zealand real estate team, is taking on a job with one of his clients in the industry, construction company Built and will soon be leaving the firm.

Also departing from his team is Peter Sidebottom who is joining rival Goldman Sachs.

Mr Stanton was among a number of high profile hires that Barrenjoey made from JPMorgan when the firm was launched in 2020.

He previously worked as a real estate analyst from 2007 at Barrenjoey before stepping up to Head of Equities in 2011 and then making the transition into banking in 2014.

Before that, he worked as an analyst at Macquarie Group from 2001 and a development manager at Lendlease between 1994 and 2000.

His departure is the first high profile exit within Barrenjoey’s investment banking team, and it comes after a quiet year of property deals in the industry and following bonus awards handed out to staff mid-year.

High interest rates, weak economic conditions and low office vacancies have put a lid on much real estate deal making in recent years, although deals related to data centres have been lucrative for advisers.

Other bankers to leave the industry have been the UBS former head of real estate investment banking for Australia and New Zealand Andrew Scade and Bank of America real estate head for Australia and New Zealand, Tim Ryan.

Mr Stanton worked with clients including Charter Hall, Blackstone and National Storage REIT.

The launch of Barrenjoey in 2020 was spearheaded by Matthew Grounds, the former head of UBS for Australia and New Zealand, and top former UBS executive Guy Fowler.

Barrenjoey is backed by British bank Barclays and Magellan and has been also moving into the area of asset management, owning shares in Guzman y Gomez, which it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange last year.

For the year to June, Barrenjoey swung from loss making territory to book a $34.7m net profit.

Magellan, which owns 36 per cent of Barrenjoey, said in its half year result on Thursday that Barrenjoey’s contribution to earnings had increased to reflect a strong 2025 half year result.

The carrying value of investments in strategic partners, which is largely Barrenjoey, increased 91 per cent to $305.5m.