The bad news today is that Hammerson lost £453m in 2009. The good news is that this is a great deal less than the £1611m lost in 2008. The results also show a significant reduction is debt, from £3.3b to £2.1b. The business is clearly taking a turn for the better.
But like its peer group Hammerson will come out of the recession much slimmed down. That £1.2m debt reduction programme was carried out by selling £1b of stock from a portfolio worth £6.4m in January 2009. Today Hammerson holds properties valued at £5.1b. In January 2008 the figure was £7.25b.
The other bit of bad/good news comes from the Times today. The paper carries an un-sourced story suggesting that JP Morgan is thinking about breaking an agreement made in the dark days of November 2008 to relocate to Canary Wharf from the City.
It would cost the US investment bank £76m to break the £237m deal to build the 1.7m sq ft HQ on the Isle of Dogs - but there is apparently an option to pull out before 2010. That is presumably why JP Morgan is now looking at other options - and those that it has been talking too have told the paper.
If true, this will be bad news perhaps for Canary Wharf. But it will be good news for the City - and maybe even Hammerson, who had a development agreement to build a new HQ for JP Morgan on London Wall.
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