David Sleath is chief executive of FTSE 100-listed industrial REIT SEGRO. Sleath shares a day in late November packed with international calls, investor questioning and an ESG agenda – both at work and home.
Until March, I hadn’t lived at home full-time for 12 years. I spent my time in London during the week and Warwickshire at the weekend. The lockdowns have completely upended my routine – though not altogether in a bad way, as I have spent most of the last nine months in the countryside.
Today, I start my day with an exercise routine in my small home gym in our garage. During this second lockdown, I have alternated between the early morning gym routine and a middle-of-the-day country bike ride, which is fantastic for a change of scene and to clear the mind.
Breakfast – the most important and enjoyable meal of the day – is oat-milk yoghurt, fruit and nuts. Then it’s straight on to three separate video conference calls, with SEGRO teams in Poland, Germany and the Netherlands.
In a normal year I would spend a large amount of my time travelling around our different offices across Europe – we have seven offices outside of the UK, with over 350 employees across the UK and continental Europe. This year, of course, that hasn’t been feasible. Yet, oddly, I feel more connected to my senior colleagues on the continent since the technology (Teams in our case) has made it so easy to “meet”.
That said, I haven’t seen as much of the wider group of staff. Since the second lockdown, it has dawned on me that I won’t be visiting our continental European teams again this year. So, this week, I’ve been catching up with more of the local teams.
The performance and resilience of everyone at SEGRO during the pandemic has been most heartening. All our markets have performed well this year. Germany has been the least affected and has a “Lockdown Lite” system in place now, while Poland and the Netherlands have been very resilient too.
Despite the pandemic, take-up levels are strong and all our teams in these offices had great success stories to tell. With bond yields so low and question marks in the minds of some investors over retail and offices, investor appetite for warehouses has also been quite extraordinary – leading to record low yields being achieved in several markets.
Lunch takes 10 minutes, as I’m running late: a salad and a hastily gobbled slice of quiche. I am leaning towards becoming mostly vegetarian and even vegan, particularly in lockdown. My eyes were really opened a year or so ago to the potential health benefits as well as some of the environmental damage caused by the livestock industry.
At 1pm I join an ESG workshop – probably the sixth I have taken part in during this remarkable year. SEGRO has always taken a responsible approach to business, but we recognise we need to go further.
How are we going to tackle climate change? How can we create a more diverse company with a truly inclusive culture? And how can we make an even greater impact on the local communities in which we invest, acknowledging that many local residents come from disadvantaged backgrounds? These are the kinds of questions we are thinking about more than ever before.
An hour later, we have our Monday executive team update, where I catch up with our CFO Soumen Das, COO Andy Gulliford, group HR director Liz Reilly and our general counsel and group company secretary Elizabeth Blease.
It’s a good chance to talk about operational matters, people issues, some of the larger deals being negotiated and regulatory and legal points.
I take a break from the video calls at 3pm to prepare for a panel session organised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The panel looks at the future of logistics across Europe, with an audience of around 80 investors. The common theme, of course, is the rise of e-commerce across the continent and how long it can continue for – quite a long time, in my opinion!
As 2020 draws to a close, I’m often asked what I think 2021 will have in store for us. I believe that the change in how we work and connect with each other is here for a while, meaning there’s going to be greater need for data and digital services, facilitated by well serviced, secure data centres.
Just after 5pm, I return to my desk to respond to e-mails, which have piled up during the day. Despite not having a commute, the days don’t seem to get any shorter.
Finally, it’s time to log off. I am pleased to say that I resist my early lockdown habit of having a glass of wine. It’s a Monday night and my rule is not to drink from Sundays to Wednesdays, then to unwind at the weekend.
My wife and I play the “Ticket to Ride” railway-themed board game and then, after supper, we are gripped by the final episode of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant’s The Undoing, a psychological thriller on Sky.
