November 2009 Archives

A day trip to Monaco last Wednesday to meet Christian Candy at his spiffing flat elicited little on the high court claim that he and his brother Nick lodged against Qatari Diar following the breakdown of their relationship on Chelsea Barracks. But it was clear over lunch that Christian Candy was nervously awaiting to hear if the Qatari's had acknowledged a claim which today's Mail on Sunday says is worth £100m.

That acknowledgement came on Thursday afternoon, just before the court closed at 4.30pm. By late Friday the claim warned of here on Thursday was a public document. The Mail has done its usual sterling job in boiling down the facts. The brothers want £81m due when the £3b project to build 638 flats was granted permission, plus £19m or so in costs and loss of profit on a separate interior design contract.

Prince Charles put paid to all that by persuading the Qatari's to abandon the Richard Rogers design: hence the naming of HRH on the claim form along with Qatari Diar because of his "direct intervention". London mayor Boris Johnson is also dragged into the fray because the Candys say that he had not made up his mind to direct refusal of the application - the excuse the Qataris used to terminate the contract.

The first question that arises from all this is the same one raised in the posting last week. Why on earth sue one branch of Qatari Inc, when you are working with another branch of the family business building 86 hyper-luxury flats in Knightsbridge? This question was put to Christian Candy on Wednesday. He didn't answer. But it is now clear from the claim that the feels the Qataris have caved in to royal pressure and broken a signed agreement.

But dragging in Prince Charles is going to cause an awful hoo-ha isn't it? Indeed. The only explanation on offer after spending a day with Christian Candy is that the hyperactive brothers don't care a fig bout creating a hoo-ha, the bigger the better in fact. They will no doubt argue it was Prince Charles who started this after all. Charles will no doubt argue his has a right to express his Royal opinion. Who is left in the middle? The hapless Qataris who apparently don't even control Knightsbridge - as the Candy's say they have 70% of the equity.

Next Friday Minerva will present an unsurprising defence against an £84.5m bid by South African Nathan Kirsch, who controls 29.9% of the struggling property company. CBRE will lend their name to a statement saying the offer needs to be 20% higher to reflect the current value of the property assets, priced at £800m in June. Then chief executive Salmaan Hasan will say he is in talks to let some of the 1m sq ft of space in two near-complete developments in the City.

That much can be gleaned from Saturday's Telegraph, which also carries the assertion by Kirsch that he is not out to make a quick profit on shares it was revealed here that he bought for about one-quarter of today's price this time last year. Not even Minerva will believe that a 77-year old living 6000 miles away is in this game to come over and manage "an attractive long-term investment in quality real estate."  

Events in Dubai may cool the fervour of break-up merchants keen to purchase cheap Minerva assets and salt them away. But a business weighed down by £847m of debt is in play, one way or another. It is possible Kirsch will win, take control and install new management. It is possible that Minerva will beat off the bid and continue to be run by the capable Hasan.

But if Kirsch is rebutted, he may well sell his stake to potential new bidder. To help keep control of his corner, Hasan will need to convince shareholders of two things on Friday. First, that the assets really are worth closer to £1b now. Second, that he is doing more than talking to occupiers. Revealing the name of an occupier who who has agreed to take 300 000 to 400 000 sq ft at either St Botolph's or Aldgate would be nice if possible. It would sure help strengthen Minerva against any second round contenders.

This week's Standard column suggesting the 2012 London Olympics might come in under the £9.3b budget was met with irritation from the dwindling band still convinced the project is a disaster. But a spin round the park last week with David Higgins and then 10 minutes with the Olympic Delivery Authority chief executive in his Canary Wharf office provided enough evidence to suggest that the budget could undershoot by maybe £1billion.

Not that the 54-year-old former head of Lend Lease would say so. "On time and on budget" remains the official stance. But take a look at the numbers in the article. The official outturn forecast figure is now £7.2b before you add back in the £1.2b for security and supporting the elite athletes. However, even that total of £8.4b includes over £800 million of unspent contingencies to cover future risks.

The second point of interest that emerged is that the ODA has just updated its estimates for the returns that might come from selling the 1400 private and 1400 affordable homes in the Olympic Village. The total figure of £778m is £222m less than the £1b cost of the village, which includes a 25 acre park and a big school. But even that gap could narrow.

Why? Because there is room for another 800-1000 units on the site and there are now a few major developers from the US and the UK interested in taking the equity stake that Lend Lease did not take during the credit crunch. Any decision is at least a year away. But a few major UK and US developers are now being given the tour by Higgins, some with their eye on renting out the private units.

What effect will Stephen Barter have at Qatari Diar? The former projects director at Grosvenor, who was suckled at Richard Ellis, returned from a job in Qatar to run the UK development business of the oil-rich state a short while ago. He was apparently appointed directly by the Prime Minister, Sheik Hamad. Barter's instructions are to sort out the Chelsea Barracks planning fiasco and get a grip on the Shard.

That latter instruction may be why Irvine Sellar is reported to be trying to slash the £27.6m section 106 agreements on the 1000-ft tower in Southwark, which is just coming out of the ground. It should be remembered that Sellar only owns 20% of the equity. Qatari Diar is actually in control. So much so that there are now rumours being put about that the Qatari's want to buy Sellar out. Why, who knows? Hang on in their Irvine. It was your idea.

The far more difficult issue facing Barter is the reaction of the Emir of Qatar to Prince Charles's request to ditch the 650 flats stacked up to 13-storeys high by Richard Rogers at the behest of the Candy brothers - who are now determined to sue the highest in both lands for a very large sum of money indeed for being ejected. A legal explosion is expected shortly.

Every architect and his wife was invited to submit new ideas for the 13-acre Chelsea site that was sold to the Qataris for £956m: ten are still on a very long shortlist. The locals now want nothing higher than four storeys. If that happens the Qataris are heading for a half-billion loss. It is all a bit of a mess. The hope is that the highly effective and sensible Barter can sort this mess out. 

Another week, another crashed retailer and another group of grumpy landlords forced to tear up the leases. This week Blacks Leisure is at the centre of the story. Today landlords like Westfield, Land Securities and Prupim are expected to agree to the termination of  leases on 89 poorly-performing stores - and take six months' rent worth £7.5m instead. The fact that this will save 5000 jobs and allow the full rent to be paid on 291 other stores does not make the landlords appear any less grumpy.

"In business, the general approach is that when one gives, one gets something in return" says Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation today. "Landlords are giving up hundreds of years of rental income to keep a retailer afloat." OK, the six months rent from the closing stores may not be a lot. But it is hardly something for nothing. They will also get the empty rates bill paid.

If Blacks is allowed to fold, landlords get nothing on 380 stores, not 89. The landlords know this perfectly well, but they feel obliged to resist. for fear that if they do not kick up a stink, it will encourage solvent tenants to start demanding lower rents.  

A bit like Angela Knight at the British Bankers Association, Liz Peace is very good at her job. So, she gets to act for the defence. But let's leave the brutal truth to be told by Richard Fleming of KPMG. He is in charge of the 9-month Company Voluntary Arrangement trying to save Blacks."If you are owed money and you are presented with two options, one of which involves you getting nothing, then it's obvious you go for the other option."

Rockspring has bought 13 industrial properties for £27m from RBS at a 13.5% initial yield - and given the buyer a loan of 60% of the present value to help pay for the purchase, says the FT this morning. Not a big deal, but one likely to repeated many times over the coming year or so by banks, who, at last, are starting to offload bankrupt stock.

Rockspring is making a name for itself. Earlier this month the Sloane Square-based fund manager run by Richard Plummer and Robert Gilchrist spent £268m on behalf of the Korean state pension fund on two shiny office properties in London. But this shed deal is more interesting in the sense that it gives a clue to the terms banks will sell workaday property.

What is missing from the tale are the key terms: how much of the upside does Rockspring take? How much does RBS get? What are the terms of the loan? Relax. It will not take long for this information to filter out through the agents on both sides of the deal. Then everyone will have a benchmark on the terms RBS and Lloyds are prepared to negotiate the biggest property sell-off in living memory.

Guess who sells more new homes in London to overseas buyers than any other agent? Not Knight Frank or Savills: it's King Sturge apparently. According to Tim Craine of residential research house MoliorLondon, the sales team led by Peter Murray sold around 1000 units to Asian investors in the first nine months of this year.

The reason for this is of course that King Sturge is in the business of selling flats for in zones two and three for £250 000 - £350 000 to investors who have never experienced the delights of Docklands or Dalston: areas in which genteel agents from Knight Frank or Savills can easily experience breathing difficulties if not acclimatized.

This information was gleaned at a residential conference held on Tuesday at which Craine also revealed that 1500 of the 5500 units sold in London in the first nine months of 2009 were sold to overseas buyers: many at very steep discounts according to one attendee at the event who said London residential developers are still desperate for cash.

This news sits at the top of today's Standard column which goes on to talk about an former head of West End sales at Knight Frank, Richard Crosthwaite. He was given the poison chalice of head of e-commerce at KF before leaving in 2002 after 27 years. Richard went off the posh lawyers Charles Russell to sell properties to rich clients.

Now Crosthwaite has persuaded the partners to invest some of their own money in a £300m property fund - which will probably not be buying the sorts of flats being sold by King Sturge.

Yesterday Minerva rightly rejected a bid of £84.5m that values the company at 50p per share. But can the developer named after the virgin goddess of warriors remain unsullied? The unsolicited approach from Nathan Kirsh, who has built up a 29.9% stake, was always coming. But what is coming next? The 77-year-old South African does not look like the type who wants to puzzle out the future of a business whose liabilities of £847m at the end of June exceeded their assets by £47m.

In fact Kirsh has already made his money - if he sells now. He owned less than 4% of the shares in mid-October 2008 when they were trading at 36p. By January 2009 his stake had risen to 29.9%. Between mid October and early January Minerva shares were trading at around 16p. In other words Kirsh bought a quarter of the company for one third of the 50p share price he thinks it is worth today. At a guess he is sitting on a paper profit £14m.

Minerva is of course sitting on two near-complete developments in the City. The hope value of St Botolph's 445 000 sq ft and the 560 000 sq ft in Aldgate is driving interest. But there are £570m of loans secured against these largely un-let developments, which are worth a touch more than the £570m mortgage at £40 ft and a 6.5% yield. But take the yield down to 5.5% and the rent up to £45 ft, and that extra couple of hundred million in value means you can see why Minerva might be worth buying.

The business was saved from perdition by the sterling work of chief executive Salmaan Hasan, who, this summer, persuaded the banks to extend deadlines on loans of nearly £700m to mid-2011 and provide £300m of working capital. But predators will remember the share price stood at 130p last summer, when a bid from Dubai-based Limitless evaporated. The opportunity funds and other opportunist buyers rumoured to be in the market are not going to go away. Some will have presumably called Mr Kirsh.

Watching the Candy brothers annoy the Qatari's in the media is like watching a pair of foxes goading an elephant. You know the Elephant is much stronger and wiser. But you know the fox is much faster and smarter. You know the Qatari's are reluctant to break cover. You know that Nick and Christian Candy will seize any chance to advance their reputation in public.

On Saturday the FT printed a tale on Chelsea Barracks broadly similar to that published in the Sunday Times three weeks earlier. The 30-somethings are suing Qatari Diar for breach of contract on now-abandoned plans drawn up by Lord Rogers at the behest of the Candys for 650 flats on the 12.8-acre site. They in turn are being sued by ex-employee Andrew Locke, who was to run the project.

To repeat the remark made here on 25 October, you have to admire the chutzpah of a pair prepared to sue a partner still helping them on a block of 86 luxury flats in Knightsbridge. Especially as the foreign minister of that partner has shelled out £100m for the top floor flat in order to establish the price of the remaining flats - half of which are not yet officially on the market.

But the brothers know perfectly well that the publicity-shy Qatari's are unlikely to respond in public, even if maddened by the coverage. Meanwhile tales sweet to the Candy's continue to be swallowed. Last week came several reports including one in the FT that Nick Candy is going out with actress Holly Valance - she used to be in Neighbours and now sings. On Saturday he told the Telegraph that he plans to buy a Swiss bank in the New Year.

Nothing in the Sunday papers beyond a series of easy guesses that British Land and Land Securities will report better interim results this week - except perhaps for a curious snippet in the Sunday Times. The business section mentions in passing that Simon Halabi might be a bidder for some offices taken from him by the receiver and now up for sale courtesy of CBRE.

The so-called White Tower portfolio includes the Aviva Tower in the City and Kings Reach Tower (pictured) on the South Bank. When Halabi refinanced in October 2006, the collection was valued at £1.8b. It is now worth £929m, say administrators Ernst & Young.

But how come Halabi has the wherewithal to even bid? Ask CBRE quietly and they will tell you that Halabi took out £250m - £350m when he re-financed. Halabi was advised to sell at the time by another City agent. But he decided against, and tried to float the portfolio by way of an IPO in early 2007. That failed and then it was too late...

Now? Well, the buy-back story has clearly come from CBRE. So, the tale should be given some credibility. But if Halabi were to buy back some or all of these assets, the next story would come from the outraged banks who lost all that money they gave him in the first place.

East end agents and auctioneers Strettons seem to have benefited from the Olympic effect, according to accounts for the year to April 2009 just lodged at Companies House.

Turnover at the 90-strong business founded in 1931 by Jack and Sydney Tobin and still controlled by their sons, Peter, Philip, and Ben, did fall from 15% from £7.8m to £6.6m. But that's not bad, given that many larger firms experienced falls of 30% falls during this period.

The firm, which has six branches, including one near the Olympic Park, even managed to squeeze a tiny profit of £24 000. But only by the directors taking a near-30% cut in pay.

In the year to April 2008 the 11 directors paid themselves £2,291,129 - an average of £208 000 each. Last year the 11 took £1,656,634  - an average of £150 000 each.

It was said rather cruelly last weekend that former HBOS real estate boss Peter Cummings "would lend to anyone, provided they were wearing a kilt and had a glass of whisky in their hand". John Kennedy, the affable head of Kenmore, favoured tartan trews: A style choice clearly Scottish enough for Cummings, who put £700m in debt and equity into the collection of funds and companies which collapsed yesterday.

Today's Times has by far the best account of the demise of the business that Kennedy nearly sold for £300m to Australian real estate group Mirvac in late 2007. A year later, in one of his last deals at HBOS, Peter Cummings helped raise £67m for Kenmore - the second recapitalisation in 2008. The Times says the FSA is investigating HBOS to see if the risk of further write-downs were adequately flagged up.

A tie up with Saudi bank, Watan Investments was announced just before the second capital raising exercise. To no avail. Now 19 separate businesses are in administration and a couple of funds are in receivership. It is not hard to see why. Kenmore was into everything from a Caravan Park on Loch Tay to shed-building in Dubai. With just 50 staff, the business was trying to manage £2b of assets in nine European funds, a scattering of direct assets across the North of England, and even a development adjacent Bond Street tube in London.

But why has Lloyds Banking Group pulled the plug now? For the usual reason: the most dangerous moment for struggling companies is when the economy is pulling out of the dive. At that point the bankers begin to believe they can get more from selling the assets than they can from letting the management struggle on. Kenmore won't be the last to suffer this fate. The company's administration is not unrelated to yesterday's post suggesting that the banks are going speed up divestment next year.

Good to see that Knight Frank's Stephen Clifton has earned yet another set of fees for his firm on the sale announced today of the former Midland Bank HQ at 27, Poultry. A price of £40m has been paid by an unnamed buyer, advised by Gresham Down, a boutique investment house set up less than 12 months ago by ex-Catella MD Stephen Down.

The building, cleverly marketed by KF as the spot where a scene was shot in the vault for the James Bond film Goldfinger, has lain empty for years. KF first sold it to Tottenham Hotspur director Paul Kemsley for £48m in 2006, whose company Rock Investments went into administration in June.

 
Kemsley flipped the deal (courtesy of KF) a couple of months later to ex-Russian finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin for £72m. Last year Chernukhin gained planning permission for a 180-bedroom hotel. But HBOS called in the loan and put the 291 000 sq ft Grade 1 listed building into the hands of administrators Grant Thornton.

They kindly asked Knight Frank to sell the building again. Today's price of £40m price against the 2006 price of £48m, then £72m, says much about the real state of the City market. But what chance of yet another flip in a rising market - and yet more fees for Stephen Clifton? Or will somebody actually develop the place at long last? Perhaps the other Stephen - Down - will provide enlightenment?

Today is the day that the biggest gamble in modern Irish history begins, says Bloomberg this morning, with the passing of a Bill to create NAMA, the state-built shelter for the 54b Euros of impaired property loans. The question now is who will pick up the chips so stupidly bet by Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank between 2003 and 2007?

It would be stupid to pretend to know the answers to a horribly complex question. There are those who will simply want to buy debt at so many cents to the Euro. There are those that will want to buy investment properties at rather more cents to the Euro. And there will be those who will want to buy land and stalled projects at hardly any cents to the Euro.

What is known is that many an opportunity fund, plus enterprising agents like Savills, (and no doubt others) are crawling all over the detail of the NAMA loan book in order to identify opportunities, especially in the recovering UK market. For 27% of the Nama loans are secured against UK real estate assets, mainly bought by over-confident Irish developers.

This activity is spurred by the feeling that the Irish authorities are a lot keener to get shot of their problems than the British government, whose asset protection scheme is now restricted to the £50b of RBS loans. That said, yesterday's post suggesting a speeding up of the RBS sales in the new year might see the transfer of rather more Irish and British property loans and physical assets in 2010 than is currently imagined.

There is an absence of significant property news in today's papers. Let's turn instead to an interesting theory put forward over lunch yesterday with one of the most significant figures in property over the past four decades: a man it would be ill-mannered to name; but a man who has made millions for both himself and his company by correctly reading the property runes.

The theory concerns the government asset protection scheme (Gaps) in which £325bn of RBS and £260bn of Lloyds toxic assets have been insured since January. Lloyds are rather bravely looking to exit the scheme by paying a £1.6bn fee just for this year's insurance. RBS want to reduce the amount insured by £43bn to £282bn and take the hit on the first £60bn, instead of £40bn, for a much-reduced annual premium of £700m, falling to £500m over three years.

Our man says Lloyds have probably calculated that the savings in tax on write-downs of the infamous HBOS property assets are worth more than the cost of continued insurance. But not at RBS it appears. Here about £50bn of the £282bn of toxic assets going into Gaps are property related. Here is where the theory gets interesting.

Current wisdom has it that if the £50bn of RBS property assets are sold immediately at today's prices, they would fetch no more than £30bn, thus bankrupting the bank. So, sales will take place very slowly.But here is some alternate wisdom. Once these assets go into Gaps, RBS will be more inclined to sell a little more cheaply and a lot more speedily. So, watch out for a major increase in the sale of RBS Gap-protected property assets come the New Year when the scheme is finally in place.

The Sunday Times says Nigel Hugill and Robin Butler have paid just £27.5m for the Alconbury air base, north of Cambridge, which closed in 1995. A sum, if correct, that will barely recompense BAA Lynton and Prologis for the cost of the 5-year planning battle they won in 2003 to build a 7m sq ft distribution park on the 1,100-acre site that nestles between the southern end of the A1 (M) and the East Coast main line.

But the former Chelsfield directors and their backers GI Partners could make a fortune if they really have paid £25 000 an acre. Not only has all the heavy lifting been done on a planning application that faced a human rights challenge, which went all the way to the House of Lords: there is also legislation, passed in 2004, which allows for a rail link to the main line that passes less than 1km from the site. Just the spot for an Eco-town perhaps?

Not that Alconbury made the shortlist; presumably because it was destined to be a shed park. That may be just what Hugill and Butler have in mind, who knows? But Hugill has spent the last six months or so advising the Homes and Communities Agency on housing policy. The urbane ex-MD of Lend Lease, who was involved in the regeneration of Paddington Basin, is not a shed-head. The clue to what they may have in mind is surely contained in the new company name: Urban & Civic.

The flat site is so vast that some sheds could be build on the western edge near the A1 (M) and still leave plenty of room to the east for homes, shops, a new civic centre, and perhaps even a railway station. The trouble with the plan is that it will entail another five year planning battle. Last time around former PM John Major, who lives close to the base, objected. He's still around. But if Urban & Civic get permission for a new settlement then a nought at least could be added to that £25 000 an acre.

Update: Urban & Civic issued a statement on Monday 9th November saying "alternative proposals have been mooted for a mixed development of regional importance." 

The regeneration of two rather run-down areas of Central London inches closer. Fitzrovia and Soho lie north and south of the eastern end of Oxford Street, yet they are worlds apart; the former blue-stocking, the latter stockings and suspenders. Derwent London has plans for their 1m sq ft estate just north of the Charlotte Street restaurant strip. Soho Estates has plans to rebuild parts of its estate centred on Dean Street and Wardour Street.

Both these tales appear in today's Evening Standard column.  Derwent London has 30 buildings in Fitzrovia and has asked architect (and tenant) Ken Shuttleworth of Make to draw up a master plan for Whitfield and Howland street area. The main prize is the redevelopment of the 200,000 or more sq ft of space occupied by Saatchi & Saatchi, whose lease runs out in 2013. Derwent are quietly keen to persuade the advertiser to decant and return to a new building containing a lot more square feet.

But the far bigger game is Soho. Porn King Paul Raymond, who built up huge holdings in the area over 40 years, died in March last year aged 82. His nephew Mark Quinn runs the business for the benefit of Raymond's granddaughters, Fawn James, 23, and her younger sister, India Rose. The 2008 accounts show a 20% upward revaluation to £357m and profits of £16m. But the acres of dilapidated stock could be worth far more if some was redeveloped.

From the moment Raymond died, there has been talk of the business doing more than sitting on its assets. But there are now strong indications that Soho Estates is looking at a few major redevelopment opportunities. Quinn is unlikely to appoint a high-profile architect to come up with a master plan for Soho. But how about Gerald Eve? Last year they were responsible for the first revaluation since 2003. And they are very good planning consultants....

Well, it has begun at last. The great multi-billion pound fire sale of bank-controlled property assets looks like it is underway. The Times reports today on the £100m sale of the half-finished Trinity Walk shopping centre in Wakefield. A project begun by the now-bust Modus funded by Allied Irish Bank: a project now to be completed by a JV that includes Sovereign Land, builders Shepherd, and the US fund, Area Property Partners, run by Bill Benjamin.

The deal will come as some relief to those who had begun to wonder if any of the deals being hawked round by the banks would ever complete. Just about every solvent and respectable property business of any size has been approached to take over stalled development deals by representatives of the Irish and British banks. Until now the gap between the percentage the banks wanted to keep as upside and percentage the buyers wanted has proved unbridgeable.

The Wakefield deal should provide evidence of the hit the Irish banks (sorry Government) are prepared to take on development deals. But what of those investment deals like the Silverburn shopping centre in Glasgow, put on the market for £250m in September by Lloyds?

Well, three property company directors and a leading retail agent spoken to in the last week have walked around the place - and been very impressed. There are said to be at least 30 serious bidders. One bidder suggested on Tuesday that he expected the price to go higher than £250m. That will please Lloyds no end if it happens. For it will prove that selling the best asset first was correct. Why? Because it may help create the impression that the huge piles of far worse kit awaiting sale is worth a little more than it really is.

This morning British Land confirmed a weekend press report that Steve Smith, head of Axa Real Estate Investment Managers, is to join the board. But BL added the news that 56-year-old Smith will be joined by 45-year old Charles Maudsley, who is giving over his job running the UK bit of LaSalle Investment Management to Simon Marrison, who has covered the continent for LaSalle since 2001.

The no-nonsense Smith and the cheery Maudsley have of course been mates for years, forming a firm bond when Maudsley worked for Smith at Axa between 1998 and 2005. So, they presumably have been hired as a pair as part of newish CEO's Chris Grigg's reconstruction of BL following the exit of board director Andrew Jones and his mates Valentine Beresford and Mark Stirling.

Smith and Maudsley will certainly bring a more down-to-earth quality to BL than the three ex-Pillar men who are all a bit posh. But the hiring of the Axa duo is not the end of the head hunt apparently. The look in the eye of a British Land director at the retirement party for JLL's hugely respected England chairman John Stephen at Claridges last night hinted at several appointments to come.

The prospect of the Homes and Communities Agency aiding the building of new homes for rent by supplying cheap land or rental guarantees had faded in the face of government spending cuts. But the fact that the HCA called for expressions of interest from funds and developers earlier in the year has re-ignited interest in an un-subsidised private rented sector.

The prospect of long-term cheap money has widened the very small gap between income and expenditure to a sufficient degree for funds managers like L&G and Aviva to take a closer look. These two funds made it from a long list of over 60 to a short list of fewer than five in that expression of interest competition which ended in late summer.

Because the HCA's interest has slackened, little has been heard since. But there has been persistent chatter among funds and developers saying, in effect "hey, we don't actually need the HCA to make this work. Let's just get on and do it ourselves." Until today nobody has put any money on the table. But a report from Building magazine suggests that Aviva is to commit £500m over the next two to three years. Now, L&G, how much are you going to spend?

Hammerson's new chief executive David Atkins produced his first Interim Management Statement this morning.

The mildly optimistic tone of the two-page document will probably settle City nerves over the firing of his ebullient predecessor John Richards in September and allow Hammerson to get on with life until the full year results in February.

So, is all well at HMS Hammerson? Well, not completely. The IMS statement talks about the opening of a new shopping centre in Aberdeen called Union Square and how it has a planet-saving green credentials. Sadly the scheme has contributed little to Hammerson's savings account. 

The statement does reveal the one point that is causing internal gloom: "our major construction projects have now been completed." In other words, a major UK developer isn't doing any major development in the UK. Nor is an early start planned on any of the bigger developments like Bishops Square north of Broadgate - and certainly not the giant £4bn Cricklewood scheme.

Atkins does say there is stuff in the pipeline "which should enable us to benefit when market conditions improve." OK, sure. But nobody quite believes the new MD's mild optimism will lead to on-site action anytime soon. Quite the reverse. There is concern that a now-cautious business, over-managed by a very cautious chairman in the shape of John Nelson (who sacked Richards) is going to miss the next development cycle due to over-caution.

No bad thing from a City point of view perhaps, given the lack of profits flowing from Aberdeen: but very boring if you work in the development team at Hammerson.

At breakfast last Wednesday the chief executive of a leading property company lent forward and suggested that Rockspring were well worth watching. Indeed. This morning comes news in the Telegraph that the fund manager run by Richard Plummer and Robert Gilchrist has spent £268m (not £265m) of the Korean state pension fund's money on two office blocks. 

The Sloane Square-based fund that has 5bn Euros of stock under management has paid ING Real Estate £183m for 88 Wood Street (pictured) in the City, a newish 247,000 sq ft multi-let block; and bought Invista's 50% interest for £85m in 40 Grosvenor Place, the Grosvenor development opposite Buckingham Palace that once famously held Enron.

This is pretty quick work for Rockspring who only announced the Korean tie up on mid-September. But clearly there is more to come. In May Plummer hired Hugh Elrington, an ex-CBRE man who was MD of Pensus Fund Management. Of even more interest is the hiring of Ed Craston three weeks ago, who spent a very uncomfortable couple of years at Lehman Brothers after being lured from his natural home at UBS in 2006, where he was European head of real estate.

Craston is well-known, well liked and will no doubt be instrumental in closing a few more deals for the Koreans over the next year or so. Which brings to mind the biggest deal of all the Koreans are supposed to be doing: the £800m purchase of the HSBC Tower in Canary Wharf. The deal was said to have been close to signing at the end of September. Have the Malaysians made a counter bid? Rockspring are not involved. But perhaps they need Ed to come in and close that deal.

Fascinating what happens when the man who has long controlled a business dies. Paul Raymond (pictured) set up Soho Estates in the 1960's. The "King of Soho" died on March 3rd 2008. The 2008 accounts for a business were released by Companies House on Friday.

The debt-free company cruises on, almost unaffected by the recession. Profits are down £1.5m to £16.2m. But turnover has been boosted 9% to £25.2m by an increase in rental income. The directors say they are "satisfied by the results." 

So they should be. Director's emoluments have shot up from £1.2m to £5m. This is because a bonus of £4m has been paid to the board,which include Raymond's daughter Fawn James and Mark Quinn, who actually runs the estate. The highest paid director got £2.6m against £413,000 in 2007.

Why the bonuses? Who knows? But it may have something to do with an upward revaluation of the estate. The net asset value of the properties rose from £139m to £207m; mostly on the back of a £59m revaluation uplift. You can guess who kept the numbers low.

But it is not all good news for the directors. Someone broke the cardinal rule and invested outside the West End. Someone lent £4m to put into a 90%-owned venture in the United Arab Emirates. Soho Estates has made a £1.4m provision against that loan. Careful guys: Paul would not approve.