Property stalwart

IN AN age of job-hopping millennials, Alistair Elliott, senior partner and group chairman of Knight Frank, jokes that he must come across as really dull to some of his younger colleagues for sticking with the same company throughout his career.

"I started straight after college. My dad was a farm manager. I think I probably wanted to go into farm management. Somebody, possibly wisely, said: 'If you're thinking about property, you can come back to farm management. Go and study commercial property, it'll be more exciting'."

After studying estate management at college, the affable Briton joined the privately-owned real estate consultancy in 1983, "blagging his way" onto the graduate scheme after missing the cut-off date for joining, he recounts. "I negotiated a slightly lower entry salary and they let me in. I honestly thought I would stay for six weeks. Either because they wouldn't like me, or I wouldn't like them. Probably, I was thinking the former. Here we are, 36 years later and I'm still there."