Top 12 International and Strategic Advisors

Rory Penn has been running Knight Frank’s private office alongside Thomas van Straubenzee since 2018, when the duo’s own agency, VanHan, was acquired by the larger firm.

According to van Straubenzee, Penn is ‘always able to calmly deal with any situation’ – a trait that must have been useful when the pair completed on a house worth £30 million last year.

One of their main objectives when they launched the private office was to ‘join up’ Knight Frank’s London offering, and the evidence suggests that approach is working. Of the 90 residential deals in prime central London last year, Knight Frank was involved in 70 per cent.