Alex Maghakian Gal and the Business of the Right Introduction
Rent Magazine Contributor —October 14, 2026
6 Mins Read
The founder of AMG Solutions Group on partnerships, property data, and why every service he sells has been tried on his own work first.
Ask Alex Maghakian Gal what AMG Solutions Group does, and he won't give you a mission statement. He'll describe a phone call. A venue that needs more weekday customers. A food producer that wants its product on London menus. A property owner trying to work out whether an empty ground-floor unit will pay its way as a café.
"Most of the problems people bring me sit between two worlds," he says. "My job is knowing who's on the other side and getting them talking."
That is the idea behind AMG Solutions Group, the London company he set up to bring his partnerships, property and consulting work under one roof. It runs five service lines: partnerships, real estate, consulting, technology and media placement. What links them is Alex's network, and a rule he keeps to: he tries every service on his own work before he sells it to anyone else.
Partnerships come first
Partnerships are AMG's flagship. Over years of working across sectors and countries, Alex built up a directory of relationships spanning industries and languages, and the partnerships service is where that directory earns its keep.
The work falls into three types. Footfall partnerships send the customers of hotels, corporates and booking platforms to a venue or experience business. Market-entry introductions connect companies coming into the UK or Spain with the buyers, landlords and advisers they need. Joint ventures and co-marketing deals bring two businesses together around a shared customer.
The footfall model is designed to make saying yes easy. The referring partner offers its own customers something extra, such as a discount or added time, at almost no cost to itself. The venue gains customers it would never have reached through advertising. "If it costs the partner next to nothing and their customers get something good out of it, the conversation is short," Alex says.
Languages do a lot of the work. Born in Beirut, of Armenian origin, raised in Barcelona and based in London, Alex is fluent in English, Spanish, Catalan, German and French. On a cross-border deal, being able to switch into the other side's language when a call stalls is often worth more than any slide deck.
His cross-border work reaches beyond Europe too. He is a shareholder and partner in a joint venture developing solar smart cities in Africa, starting with the Victoria Falls region.
AMG's own base is a partnership too. The company now works out of Juntos Offices at 52 Bedford Row in Holborn, a home that grew out of Alex's long-standing relationship with Juntos's co-founders. "Most of my best arrangements were friendships long before they were deals," he says.
Property, run on data
AMG's real estate work grew out of family property. Alex manages a portfolio in central Barcelona, including mixed-use buildings in the Eixample and shares in other nearby buildings, and is taking over the day-to-day management from the family. He is now expanding the portfolio into London.
Managing it showed him how often property decisions rest on gut feel. When a coffee-and-bagel concept was proposed for a ground-floor commercial unit in one of the Eixample buildings, he ran a full viability assessment before taking it any further.
That habit turned into Distresso, a pair of AI-powered deal-screening tools AMG built for the UK and Spanish markets. Distresso UK and Distresso ES each catch distressed properties early in their market (in Spain, through official sources such as the Social Security’s electronic notice board) and screen them so an investor sees the few worth a closer look rather than hundreds of listings.
AMG also takes on private client work. It recently prepared the analysis and negotiation materials for a client in talks with a serviced-apartment operator.
The real estate service covers property data and analytics for residential and commercial investors across the UK and Europe.
An operator, not a theorist
Before AMG, Alex built his track record in operations. As operations manager at an app-based car rental company, he built a dynamic pricing model that kept fleet utilisation at around 95%. He also built a damage-prediction model that cut claims by 38%, saving more than £3 million a year. Earlier, he worked as a compliance analyst at Revolut, and he has since spent years in IT operations and technical project delivery inside large organisations.
"I've worked alongside plenty of consultants," he says. "The useful ones had done the job themselves."
That background shapes AMG's consulting service: strategy, operations and digital change for growing organisations, judged on what actually gets delivered. He backs it with a data science bootcamp from HyperionDev and the University of Nottingham, finished with a 100% average, the CII Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning, and Harvard Business School Online's Disruptive Strategy course. The newest addition is private reputational due diligence, which checks the public record and online footprint of a prospective partner, investor, or hire before a deal is signed.
The technology service is aimed at smaller businesses rather than enterprise IT. It covers AI and workflow automation, cloud setup, and websites, including a one-page starter site that goes live within a week. The Distresso tools, built on Anthropic's Claude models, are the proof of concept, and Alex holds several Anthropic certifications in building with Claude, including agent skills and the Model Context Protocol.
Exposure, tried on himself first
Media placement sits alongside partnerships as the exposure side of the same offer. AMG gets clients featured in recognised publications, live within 72 hours. Alex tested it on himself first: he has been featured by USA News and CEO Times, and MensInsider covered his Paris and London Marathons in April 2026, run back-to-back for Movember with AMG as headline sponsor.
He uses the same skills closer to home, running the marketing for his mother, the painter Virginia Gal, including the Instagram campaign around her work in the "L'automne à Paris" group exhibition at Galerie Artes.
"I wouldn't sell anyone a feature I hadn't been through myself," he says. "Same with the tools, and same with the partnerships."
What comes next
For now, AMG is one company with five service lines. Alex's plan is to turn it into a holding group over the next few years, with each line spun out as its own company once its work justifies it. In the meantime, the focus is on recurring work: partnerships and retained advisory rather than one-off projects.
"I'd rather add a company when the work needs one than print a logo for it," he says.
For businesses looking for the right introduction, a way into a new market, or a clearer read on a property decision, AMG offers a 30-minute introductory call.
Connect with AMG Solutions Group
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