August 2009 Archives

There was a 234% increase in the number of £1m-plus homes sold in London this August compared to last said Knight Frank on Friday. This was enough to persuade a gullible FT to make it the lead story on Saturday.

But the supposedly numerate paper failed to ask the obvious question; how many houses were actually sold in both months in question? The answer that Bloomberg had the wit to elicit from Knight Frank is 250 - against 75 in August 2008.

If you want to cut through the hype that surrounds the sale of high price homes, take a look at the Land Registry figures, also produced on Friday. 

The data is admittedly three months behind the percentages that KF carefully timed to come out on the same day. But the Registry publishes the actual numbers. 

Exactly 238 homes worth more than £1m were sold in London during May 2008. In May 2009 the figure was just 131.Nobody has of course troubled to write "sales of £1m homes in London plunges by 49%." 

Savills results yesterday for the first six months of 2009 make those of Cushman & Wakefield look pretty poor. The guys from Grosvenor Place recorded revenues down 11% at £248m and a tiny profit of £100 000. Today the guys from Portland Place recorded revenues down 32% to £305m and a whopping great loss of £46m.

It is fairly easy to see how listed Savills managed to just stay in the black - down to a sterling performance from the property management business. It is very difficult to see how C&W made a loss. The business is controlled by the Italian Agnelli family. Only a brief account of trading is included in the accounts of a holding company called EXOR which also controls Juventus football club (who made a profit)

EXOR gave C&W a $50m line of credit in March, of which C&W spent $20m. If the loan in not paid back by May 2012 EXOR have a right to buy shares in C&W at valuation minus 30% from the equity partners who still own 32% of the business. The partners will no doubt be hoping to at least match Savills in the second half of 2009.

The chances of Real Estate Opportunities ever developing Battersea Power Station (pictured left) are surely diminishing.

Half-year results published yesterday for the listed business 66% owned by Treasury Holdings of Ireland make grim reading.  

REO has properties worth £1622m at the end of June -and £1621m of debt. There is just £61m in the bank. Yet £556m of loans are due to be repaid this year and another £201m in 2010. Agreement to roll over this £757m debt has not been reached.

REO say they have a "reasonable expectation" of these loans being rolled over, so the company will be able to meet its liabilities for the next 12 months. But the accounts have been qualified by auditors KPMG who say there is a "material uncertainty" over REO's ability to continue as a going concern - unless the banks defers these loan repayments.

The parlous state of REO raises a couple of questions. First, will Treasury Holding owners John Ronan and Richard Barrett stand behind REO's debts if it comes to the crunch? Second, where will the couple of billion needed to build out 3700 homes and 2m sq ft of commercial space at Battersea come from?

The old power station site value has been downgraded by 15% to £388m. This excludes £19m of capital already expended preparing at least three sets of plans including the first set with that ridiculous chimney. The designs now do look good. But the re-workings have wasted a year. Work needs to start soon to catch this cycle. Are there any debt or equity partners out their willing to risk it with REO on a site that has been a graveyard for developers for 30 years? 

With a bit of luck Savills will be able to boast in a few years time that they never made a loss during the great plunge of 2007-2009: but only just. This morning the business reported a tiny £100 000 profit for the first half of 2009 on revenues down a respectable 11% to £248m over the same period last year.

There are two points to be drawn from the numbers; first, the glamour boys and girls in the transaction business should be thanking former chief executive and Great Helmsman Aubrey Adams for getting them into the unglamorous business of tending other people's property.

Property management made a £7.2m profit in the first half on revenues up 21% at £105m - 43% of the entire income. This performance pretty much made up for a £7.6m loss on transactional work where turnover fell 30% to £74m.

The second point to make is that new chief executive Jeremy Helsby still has a bit to go on a promise to cut £50m in costs by this Christmas. The ruthlessly efficient CEO saved £22m last year. Another £20m has been found so far this year. Helsby is not a man to break promises. So £8m worth of pain to come: you can guess where from.

You apparently pronounce Simon Halabi's (pictured left) first name to rhyme with the memory card that plugs into the back of your mobile phone. But not that much more is known about the reclusive and litigious Syrian whose property company Buckingham Securities went bust last Friday.

The news in today's Telegraph of the demise of Buckingham will not be lamented by Irvine Sellar.

He fought a bitter legal battle with Halabi over the latter's one-third stake in the Shard.

Architects Fitzroy Robinson who sued Halabi - and were then counter-sued - over works to the still-derelict In and Out Club on Piccadilly won't be unhappy either.

Buckingham's liquidation comes hard on the heels of the collapse of Halabi's £1.4b Protractor portfolio of nine office blocks, including the JP Morgan European HQ in London Wall. CBRE have been appointed to get the best price for the assets: which brings us to another CBRE client in the news this morning.

For some reason Gerald Ronson finds it necessary to advertise in the FT today that he is to open an "invitation only" fund to raise £1b in equity and debt to buy distressed properties.  Perhaps the tale has been told to attract properties rather than money. But if the chaps at CBRE dealing with Halabi's protractor portfolio would like to talk to the chaps dealing with Heron there would be no need to advertise at all.

US wealth fund manager AllianceBernstein has been looking around for new offices in either the City or the West End for at least three years now.  The question now is: City or West End? 

Since May the AXA-controlled business has employed the considerable talents of Bradley Baker of Knight Frank to find them 110 000 sq ft in a single building to replace about the same amount of space currently occupied in Devonshire House W1 and close by at Mayfair Place, where they are paying are around £65 sq ft.  

Prime rents in the West End are round £85 foot today, with limited incentives and limited choice. In the City headline rents are about half those in the West End - and, if you push hard, three years rent free is still available. And there are a fair number of rather fancy offices of the right size lying empty.  

It is not hard to imagine that all those wealth and hedge funds so attracted to the West End in boom times might start to return to their ancient home in the City as their leases fall in. Led perhaps by AllianceBernstein - if they can finally make up their minds.

The squeeze on the fees being earned by property fund managers is amply demonstrated by looking at the commendably detailed results from the ING UK Real Estate Investment Trust published this morning.

The Trust is managed by ING Real Estate Management, who parted company with their head of acquisitions, Nicholas Gill today.  But this close relationship has not prevented the Trustees of the fund negotiating a big reduction in fees.  Instead of getting 0.9% of the gross assets, the manager now gets 1.45% of the net assets plus a performance fee. But they don't have to pay administrative expenses - whatever they are.

This new deal translates into a 30% reduction - or just over £1m a year - prior to the payment of any performance fee says the Trust. This is no doubt the case. But that percentage drop is based on a June 2009 valuation of £357m for the gross assets.

You might have thought that the Lloyds would have had quite enough of property deals given all those toxic assets they inherited from Peter Cummings of HBOS. But the state-controlled bank is apparently thinking about selling its own headquarters at 25,Gresham Street and renting it back from the new owner. That at least is the gossip among City agents who have their fingers crossed for an announcement next month. Lloyds bought a very long lease on the 110 000 sq ft building from Asticus in 2002 for somewhere between £90 million and £100 million. What would a sale and leaseback deal on the Nicholas Grimshaw design building net Lloyds today?  "About the same" says our informant. 

The Observer is to become a 28-page salmon-pink weekly focussing entirely on commercial real estate.  Don't fret. The Guardian Media Group has not gone barmy. They are still trying to figure out what to do with Britain's oldest Sunday newspaper, which is losing them a fortune.  This particular Observer is to be New York's newest newspaper according to today's New York Times. The Commercial Observer is being set up by a paper called the New York Observer, whose owner may or may not be barmy.  It will be send free to 10 000 real estate professionals and sell for $240 a year to those who don't qualify. Whatever happened to the end of old media? And what happened to the New York real estate slump?

Martin Barber is back. The former head Capital & Regional tells the FT this morning he has found a group of unnamed investors in America willing to back Zenith Estates, a company set up with his son Jamie, who part-owns the Hush restaurant in Mayfair amongst others.

The combative Barber was less-than-politely asked to leave C&R last spring after a fall out with the board of retail and leisure business which was struggling badly at the time. Not a happy parting.

Barber says his backers have committed enough equity to allow him to buy £2b-£2b of stock for Zenith, which will be floated in five years time. Time will tell.

Meanwhile C&R struggles still, despite the best efforts of its new and more emollient MD Hugh Scott-Barrett. Last week the former banker was forced to sell new shares in C&R at a 73% discount to raise £70 m for the still-struggling business.

Barber will now presumably be calling Scott-Barrett to suggest Zenith donate more fresh capital to C&R by the purchase of the odd shopping centre or retail park. Will Scott-Barrett return the call?

The Sunday Times also inevitably picked up on the news posted here on Friday that Norman Foster had given himself a 40% pay rise while his loss making business sacked 300 architects. By an accident of timing that will not amuse those fired, Lord Foster's MD, Mouzhan Majidi, is featured in the Home section of the same paper.

The architect is pictured draped over a soft leather couch in an article that is essentially a sales pitch for his twee house in Surbiton - with hugely expensive Foster-style back addition. Majidi wants to sell the place for £1.75m - almost exactly the new annual rate of pay his boss enjoys. Our man on the couch says he aspires to Richmond. He can afford to: Majidi was one of the five directors whose combined pay rose from £3.1m to £4.4m.

Surveyors who make a few bob from negotiating leases in the mobile phone mast market might like to start thinking about the advent of a grown-up electric car market. All the major motor manufacturers will be introducing battery-powered cars in the next 1-5 years.

But where do you plug them in? At home, obviously - but someone is going to have to provide for that away-from-home boost. Is there a new roadside niche market in providing electric docking stations? Is there a market for an entirely new sort of real estate: battery-swapping stations?

The thinking behind this concept is that you glide into said station and an operative hoists out your depleted battery and hoists in a fresh one.  This may sound far-fetched - and probably is. But Renault is apparently building cars with removable batteries.

If you can locate a copy of the 24^th August edition of the New Yorker magazine, have a look at the story on a market that will be churning out 70 million electric cars a year by 2020, say the optimists. One of those is Shai Agassi who runs a Silicon Valley company called Better Places.

The 41-year old Israeli is already working to install 100 000 charging posts and building 100 battery-switching stations in Israel and is planning similar networks in Denmark, Australia and Hawaii.

Like mobile phone masts, there has to be a real estate angle - hasn't there?

The "undisclosed sum" paid by the Canadian Altus group for storeys; ssp this week won't be that much if the accounts for the October 2008 year end filed last week are anything to go by.  The 150-strong business founded in Newcastle by George Storey in 1891 lost £269 000 on turnover down nearly £1m at £6.8m.

The accounts reveal the business was in breach of its banking covenants last October and that at the 28^th July this year when the directors signed the accounts that situation "remained unresolved." Presumably the Canadians who took over Edwin Hill a year or so back have now resolved the situation with a small cheque. 

There might be a fuss when others delve into the accounts of Foster + Partners Group. News that the design practice led by Lord Foster lost £16m in the year to April appears today in the architectural press. But little is made of the real news.

A look at the report and accounts filed at Companies House on 14th August show that the six directors of the group increased their total pay from £3.1m to £4.4m, with the highest paid director enjoying a 40% increase to £1.73m. That director is presumably Lord Foster himself.

The 1226-strong practice is doing OK in terms of day-to-day trading: operating profit of £25m on turnover up £11m to £153m. But the business is saddled by 20 years of repayments on a loan and loan notes totalling £310m made by the venture capital company 3i, which now owns 40% of the business.

These interest payments totalling £40m turn that £25m operating profit into a very real £16m loss.  In February the firm announced it was to make a quarter of the workforce redundant. Hardly the time to be whacking up directors pay, is it? 

This morning's award for pretentious pessimism goes to the Lex writer in the FT who comments on the moderately good commercial property news coming out of the US today with a quote from gloomy German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche: "hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man."

Prepare to be tormented. The FT itself reports that capital values in the office market are rising in the US in thin trading. The Daily Telegraph quotes figures showing a 25% jump in residential mortgage applications, plus another tale of an increase in the number of new homes being built in America.

All good news for the share prices of CBRE and JLL no doubt.

This side of the pond there is one bit of good news and two nice summer stories. The Times reckons the recession is officially over after examining Bank of England forecasts which show that GDP growth will rise by 0.2% between July and September.

A desperate-for-copy columnist in the Times resorts to the suggestion that Lego could help solve the UK's housing crisis. 

But the award for the most inventive summer tale must go to the Architects Journal which today publishes the results of a competition to design second homes for MP's.

The most inventive solution is to dock a cruise ship on the Thames outside the Palace of Westminster: the most Nietzchean being the building of a nuclear bunker with beds under the Palace.

British Land failed to pull the Broadgate sale rabbit out of the hat yesterday. And chief executive Chris Grigg failed to give an unambiguous steer on where the company is going.

That much is clear from this morning's mixed coverage in the FT, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. BL will sell anything "at the right price" and there are "no sacred cows." In the same breath there was talk about "taking the opportunity to buy distressed assets."

There are perfectly understandable reasons for selling - cutting down the £4.8b of net debt in a business where the assets have shrunk from £12b to £8b. There are perfectly understandable reasons for buying - prices are down 40% and look set to rise.

But BL has plenty high quality distressed assets of its own worth 40% less than 2 years ago. Why sell them to buy more? BL's own property will go back up in price as fast, if not faster, than anything new that can be bought. Why not improve your own assets?

Broadgate is the perfect example. That "sacred cow" does need £350m spent on repairs according to one authoritative source. If you factor this in and do the sums, the £150m bid by Blackstone for half the equity values the estate at roughly £2.75b - a yield of just under 6%.

But there are plans on the table to upgrade and upsize the estate from 4.3m to 5.5m sq ft, which would take the end value well over £4b. As has been suggested here before, why give away half the uplift for £150m at the bottom of the market?

A drive past the Candy Brothers residential development at One Hyde Park  in Knightsbridge yesterday shows that builders Laing O'Rourke are progressing well. But will building 86 super-luxury flats do well for Nick and Christian Candy and their Qatari partners?

Yes - if £4,000 per sq ft can be achieved for the 384,500 sq ft of net sellable space; after all, that is just over £1.5bn for these rather low-ceiling flats.

                                                   One Hyde Park

Last December Nick Candy said the costs added up to no more than £800m. This includes a £550m construction bill, which is 50% higher than the original estimate thanks mainly to a huge triple basement to satisfy the needs of the neighbouring Mandarin Hotel.

He also said that half the flats have been sold for £750m.  So, all will be well. Well, probably. But One Hyde Park agents Savills are also advising on a development of 60-odd super-luxury flats just up the road that also overlook a park - this time, Holland Park.  

These are the flats planned by Chelsfield at the Commonwealth Institute, where a revised application was submitted last week. And what price per square foot are the longer-in-the-tooth developers Sir Stuart Lipton and Elliott Bernard counting upon ? Just under half that being counted upon at One Hyde Park by all accounts - and that will also buy a bit more headroom.

British Land chief executive Chris Grigg better come out fighting tomorrow when the UK's second largest property company announces its first quarter results. 

In the nine months since the former chief of Barclay's commercial division took the job not much has been heard from the low profile banker. But in the last few weeks a great deal has been heard about BL.

The company is now being destabilised by bid rumours and talk again at the weekend of selling half of Broadgate for a ridiculously low price . The bid rumours may not be true. But if it turns out that BL is to give away half the equity in Broadgate for as little as £150m then Grigg will have to make a very convincing case against the argument that BL is so desperate for the cash it will sell at any price.

There are plans for Grigg to raise his low profile in the autumn, which is fine. Expect to see the odd interview. But what is actually needed - right now - is a clear and unambiguous line from the man himself on where BL is headed.

It will be interesting to see if Grigg can match the effortless superiority of his predecessor Stephen Hester, or even get close to demonstrating the iron grip of Hester's predecessor Sir John Ritblat. 

Friday's publication of the Investment Property Databank July indices now makes it possible to look back and see the shape of the nastiest recession since the 1930's, which began in July 2007 and seems to have finished in July 2009, with the monthly index barely down on the month before.

The shape is a wonky "W" - if you chart the three-month rolling average fall in the IPD index over the 24 month period. The bottom of the second half of the letter is a lot lower than the first half. What this shows is what all felt; nerves steadied early last year. But the second dip from July 2008 to July 2009 was even scarier than dip from July 2007 to January 2008.

The indices also show that that the fear of capital values halving never quite materialised. Office and retail values fell by about 45%, sheds by 40%. Prices in these latter two sectors now stand at what they were in November 1997.

But subscribers to the full database can look back even further - and see what an appalling investment commercial property is for anyone foolish enough to rely upon capital appreciation alone. Shop prices are just 39% up since 1986 and sheds 49%. Over the same period the Retail Prices Index has more than doubled and FTSE index trebled.

And why are offices the most fashionable sector? Steady income perhaps. But the IPD Capital Growth index for offices stood at 99.53 last month.  The index began life at 100 in December 1986: twenty two and half years - and zero capital growth.

The argument about buying in the trough and selling at the peak of course holds water. But take a look back through the index: the peaks in retail and sheds are a lot higher than they are for offices.

The scandal of hobbit-sized new homes was finally bought to wider public attention last week by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) who surveyed 2500 buyers of new homes and found that most felt cramped. 

No wonder. England builds the smallest new homes in Europe - and England is the only place without minimum space standards.

The Home Builders Federation (HBF) told their usual fib when faced with this uncomfortable truth: "If you increase the size of homes without more land becoming available the cost to the end user will go up." 

Pointing out to the HBF that lower densities reduces the price of land rather than increases the price of new homes (which are fixed to the price of old homes) is next to useless.

The only thing that will make developers build bigger homes is, of course, the introduction of the sort of minimum space standards laid down in the 1960's by Sir Parker Morris, a civil servant who did the job for the government. 

The Homes and Communities Agency is already insisting on "Parker Morris plus 10%" for homes it subsidises.  Mayor Boris Johnson is also leaning on private developers in London.

Can CABE do more? Of course. But first the organisation must choose between ex-Architects Journal editor and all-round good-egg, Paul Finch, rather good ex-Arts Minister Alan Howarth and an obscure academic from Manchester to run the organisation under threat from Tory Quango hunters.  White smoke is due any time now. (2-1 on Howarth, fingers crossed for Finch).

Then the new man can please Boris (and his fellow Tories) by adopting the HCA standards as their own and then lobbying for their introduction into planning guidance. 

Who knows, the move might even ameliorate the effects of a Conservative cull on an organisation where style has, until now, trumped substance.

Gerald Ronson is not content with having one tower under construction in the City.  Work on a second will start next year. The former is of course the 46-storey Heron Tower in Bishopsgate which is beginning to dominate the skyline, even though a further 20 storey's are to yet be added.

Observers were wondering if Ronson was having second thoughts about his second tower. Planning permission was granted in November 2007 for the 27-storey Barbican Centre Tower which will house the Guildhall School of Music underneath 284 flats.

The land next door to the main entrance to the Barbican concert halls has long been cleared. Had Gerald lost his nerve? Heaven forbid. Heron MD Peter Ferrari says that the £100m scheme will go out to tender in September and work will start next year.

A tip for builders Carillion: Don't even bother trying to get on the tender list. Gerald Ronson is deeply fed-up with your performance on "The Peak" - a 98 000 sq ft block in Victoria nearing completion - but many months late.

Trevor Osborne (pictured left) has had his ups and downs. But just-filed results for the 12 months to September 2008 show the former chairman of Speyhawk, now in his mid-sixties, is ticking along well enough.

Those with long memories will recall Speyhawk going bust in 1993 owing the banks £360m.

Bitter bankers with long memories still recall the after dinner speech in which Osborne made a joke about how he could not have achieved so much without their help. Clang.

He bounced back, ending up in an unlikely joint venture with consulting engineers Pell Frischmann called Hawk. That ended in a terrible legal fight over profit sharing with Dr Wilem Frischmann, which Osborne lost in 1998. He was forced to issue a public apology and hand his stake in the business to Frischmann.

For the last 10 years or so The Trevor Osborne Property Group has generally stuck to developing hotels and the like in genteel spots like Oxford, Bath and Buxton. The accounts show investment properties valued by Osborne himself in September 2008 at £49m

The good news is those properties only cost £32m. The bad news is that development activities pushed the bank overdraft up from £31m to £41m in the 12 months to last September. Even so, an £8m gap between assets and overdraft doesn't seem that bad. 

Group net asset value may have got better or worse in the last 10 months, who knows? But, bankers, well, they do have long memories. One persuaded Osborne to sign a  £1.39m personal guarantee against the company overdraft.

Today's second quarter figures for Jones Lang LaSalle are not good; but not quite as bad in revenue terms as CBRE, which announced last week.

At JLL global income fell 13% to $576m in the three months to June compared to the same period last year. At CBRE the fall was 27% to $955m. At both firms, small profits turned into small losses.

In Europe performance was spookily parallel.  JLL's revenues fell 39% to $143m. At CBRE the revenue fall was 41% to $176m. But both produced matching cost cuts, presumably by sacrificing staff. Operating costs at JLL were down 39% to $144m. At CBRE the cut was 41% to $172m.

CBRE's European chief Mike Strong was praised here for running a tight ship. Clearly JLL's new European captain Christian Ulbrich and his predecessor Alastair Hughes have also thrown plenty of costly bodies overboard.

What you have now are two firms just 60% of the size they were 12 months ago in Europe and barely breaking even. But considering the last 12 months were probably the worst in property history, not a bad result, except for those thrown overboard.

A question for City agents with long memories: has there ever been a bigger spec letting in the City or Canary Wharf than the 525,000 sq ft deal that will see Nomura move into Watermark Place (below) in Upper Thames Street in August 2010? If there is Chris Vydra of Knight Frank will be a touch disappointed.

During a walk round the Fletcher Priest designed block this morning that almost let to News International (James Murdoch wanted to do the deal, daddy Rupert did not) and to Bloomberg (last minute change of mind) Vydra said he thought the letting to the Japanese Bank was the largest of an already-built block the City had ever seen.

The tour followed a tetchy review here of the design seen from the back. A look round the front and the innards made it clear why the Japanese Bank preferred this block to the Minerva scheme in Cannon Street, just up the road. The view over the river is to die for - and the chief executive gets the best seat.

What really matters to City agents are of course the terms. Here Vydra stopped praising the building and became tight-lipped.  But well informed sources suggest the rent is between £40 and £50, and the rent free period on the 20 year lease is over 2 years. PS: despite reports to the contrary, Nomura is retaining the old HQ in St Martin's Le Grand

There is only one place to go this morning if you are interested in the loans given by Icelandic Bank Kaupthing. That is a 210-page confidential presentation dated 25^th September 2008, which has been posted on the Wikileaks site.

It gives details of loans to 205 different organisations who had borrowed between 45 and 1250 million Euros.  Not long after this internal report was compiled the bank collapsed.

Robert Tchenguiz and his brother Vincent feature. Robert had a loan of 1082m Euros with an LTV of 98% at the time. Vincent had borrowed 208m Euros, secured against ground rent income.

The best known loan is of course that given to Nick and Christian Candy. In September 2008 the outstanding amount was 256m Euros - about £220m.  

Kaupthing say the site was valued at £355m by Savills in November 2007. In September 2008 the bank estimated the value had fallen to just about the level of the loan.

Don't even ask what the cleared 3 acres north of Oxford Street is worth today. You will know soon enough, for a deal to either joint venture or sell NOHO is being negotiated.

Legal & General (L&G) have done pretty well today out of the non-sale of the 3.7 acre Wallbrook site in the City of London to Metrovacesa, haven't they?  Presumably by accident, but here's how:

Step one: come up with an overblown design in 2006 by using funky French Architect Jean Nouvel. Funky French architect obliges with 350ft tall "Darth Vader helmet" tower as part of 1m sq ft scheme (pictured right).

Step two: find developer in the shape of Metrovacesa. Get them excited. Sell them the site (plus overblown plans) for £240m in September 2007.

Step three: force almost-bust Spanish developer to pay £100m today in return for walking away from a deal that has cost them £162m to date, including a previous payment to L&G of maybe £40m.

Next step:  Right, we have got our £140m. That is what the site was really worth in the first place. All we need to do now is to get that much again to double our money. Result.

Just one thing guys. Perhaps this time you will let the buyer work out what can be built?  It will save a lot of time and may even allow something decent to be erected on a site currently occupied by empty sixties office blocks.

Why has the convivial John Richards (pictured left) retired from Hammerson after 30 years, at the still tender age of 53? 

There are few clues in the half year results out today which announce that head of UK David Atkins, (age 43) will be taking over as chief executive.

There is of course that £818m loss in the six months to June 30^th - and the whopping 28% fall in the value of the portfolio from £6.5bn to £4.7bn. But almost half of that £1.8bn shrinkage can be blamed on DTZ who down-valued the portfolio by 12%.

Much of the rest can be blamed on Richards. But only because he flogged off nearly £600m of stock to get the overdraft down. Those sales, plus a timely rights issue of £584m at the beginning of the year helped reduce Hammerson's net debt from £3.3bn to £2bn and leaves the business with £900m of undrawn facilities.

So, why leave now? That will probably become clear in the coming days. Meanwhile, its farewell to a jolly, funny, plainspoken character who's barking laugh and West-country burr will no longer echo down the corridors of Hammerson HQ in Grosvenor Street.