AXA Real Estate Investment Managers has appointed Deborah Shire as global head of business development, a new position which carries overall responsibility for corporate finance, investor relations, marketing & communication and business development.

Reporting directly to CEO Pierre Vaquier, Shire will join AXA Real Estate's management board and play a key role in leading innovation, supervising product initiatives and coordinating capital-raising efforts.

Shire joins AXA Real Estate from her position as deputy head of structured finance at AXA Investment Managers, where she was in charge of strategy, finance, marketing, operations and product development.

Having joined AXA IM in 1998 as a quantitative portfolio manager, Shire then worked alongside the founding team in 2000 to establish AXA IM’s structured finance division, where she became head of structured finance engineering in charge of product development and structuring.