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John Lipper
John Lipper
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

John founded Altius Private with a clear vision: to create a real estate advisory that combines entrepreneurial thinking, institutional discipline, and complete alignment with its clients’ investment objectives.

Over more than two decades, he has founded, scaled, and led businesses across the real estate sector, culminating in the successful creation and sale of Madison Brook, a multi-disciplinary property company with expertise spanning investment, development, agency, and asset management.

Career highlights

  • Founded and successfully grew Madison Brook into one of London’s leading independent property groups before its sale to Chesterton's in 2026.
  • Established a specialist private legal practice, providing strategic legal support to real estate investors and developers.
  • Appointed as an official estate agency partner during the London 2012 Olympic Games, supporting one of the capital’s most significant periods of regeneration.
  • Led the disposal of a £78 million residential investment portfolio on behalf of the pension fund M&G Real Estate.

At Altius Private, John is responsible for the firm’s strategic direction, ensuring every client benefits from the same principles that have underpinned his career: independent advice, disciplined execution and relationships built for the long term.

Laurie Emsworth

Laurie Emsworth

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

Laurie leads the day-to-day operational delivery of Altius Private. Building the systems, teams and partnerships that let the firm operate with real discipline.

Across two decades in UK and UAE real estate, he has built a track record of navigating high-growth markets, holding leadership position at both large corporates and boutique firms. Launching new products, creating operating models from scratch, and building the partnerships, institutional and individual, that endure and deliver returns. He brings a keen eye for innovation, attention to detail, and a genuine passion for real estate.

Career highlights

  • Senior Director for a leading prime central London agency
  • Recruited as Chief Operating Officer for a luxury Dubai brokerage
  • Delivered a pioneering public/private investment partnership
  • Repositioned a national developer's proposition and portfolio

A Private Office Built on Perspective

Navigating real estate investment with clarity, perspective and confidence.
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Long-term outcomes. By design.

About Altius Private

Altius Private exists for clients who think about real estate the way they think about any other significant capital decision: in the context of a wider life, a wider portfolio, and a longer horizon. We are not a brokerage. We do not promote properties. We are an advisory platform, built around the slower, more considered work of helping clients hold, sell, acquire and structure real estate as part of that wider view.

These relationships are exclusive by intention, not by aesthetic — we want to know our clients well enough to disagree with them, and to be disagreed with in return. Engagements are measured in years, not transactions.

Clients come to us for perspective, not property. They expect judgement, restraint and a clear view of what is actually worth doing. They tend to stay because that posture rarely fades into proximity, activity or noise, the three things that crowd most real estate conversations.

Not a brokerage.
Advisors.
Not transactional.
Long-term partnerships.
Not urgency.
Judgement.
Not noise.
Perspective.
Heritage

Honed Over Multiple Cycles

Two decades of advisory experience across residential real estate, investment markets and asset management. The principals have advised private investors, institutional capital, government bodies and long-term asset partners through multiple market cycles; including the periods surrounding 2008, 2016 and 2020.

Prior to Altius, they led a London-based real estate and asset management platform operating across agency, investment and long-term property management. The business was acquired by Chestertons, one of the UK's most established property firms.

That work, shaped by growth markets and by complexity in equal measure, continues to inform how the practice approaches each engagement today.

Leadership Team

John Lipper

John Lipper

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
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Laurie Emsworth

Laurie Emsworth

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
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