Two weeks into the job and Michael Bear – the first Lord Mayor of London to come from a property background for some three decades – is still clearly tickled pink about his new office.
“We’ve had Lord Mayors from financial backgrounds for a long time,” says Bear, adding that the City has witnessed 15 years of unbelievable growth, of which the main driver was the financial services sector. “But the City has always been a broader church.
“I was sheriff three years ago, before the credit crunch, and that put me onto a progression to be Lord Mayor. It probably did help that I was seen as being independent from the financial services sector.”
Bear, the 683rd Lord Mayor to hold the post, is seated in the Venetian parlour on the first floor of Mansion House, next to Bank station in the City of London. Behind him, crammed into a glass cabinet, are 108 identical teddy bears, which Bear intends to sell to each of the City of London’s 108 livery companies to raise money for his charity appeal Bear Necessities: Building Better Lives. And scattered throughout the Georgian palace are various other commemorative bears of different shapes and sizes.
So perhaps it is fitting that Bear was elected by the liverymen of London to be Lord Mayor during this bear market.
As director of regeneration at Hammerson – among other roles – Bear has spearheaded the redevelopment of Spitalfields Market and, until his mayoral term of office started, was working on schemes including Bishopsgate Goods Yard, E1; St Alphage house, EC2; and Bishops Place, E1. He is determined to use his business background to bring a broader perspective to the role, which is traditionally to promote and support the businesses of the City of London (see panel, p55).
“I come from the demand side of financial and business services,” says Bear. “I’ve worked internationally and used City companies to finance, insure and protect ourselves legally. So that has given me, as a customer, an insight into how the City works. Many of the Lord Mayors who have preceded me come from the supply side, which gave them a different perspective.”
Reward over quality
To this end, Bear says his business philosophy is “about the excellence of what we do provide”. He hopes to do this by promoting “the broader City”; that is, not only finance but the links between finance and trade and industry. “Maybe that got a little bit lost two years ago,” says Bear. “People were after the reward rather than the quality.”
This includes even promotion of the City – in the widest possible definition. “I regard Canary Wharf as part of the City, with a big C – as I do Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester,” says Bear. “We bat for the UK-based financial and business services industry. The Square Mile is a microcosm of this, so we are at the epicentre of what happens.”
As Lord Mayor, Bear’s main job is to promote the City to the rest of the world through a series of 23 trade missions abroad and by playing host to an equal number of foreign trade representatives when they visit the City. In this capacity his position carries serious diplomatic weight.
“I travel to the rank of Cabinet minister,” says Bear. “I love saying that bit.”
However, the experience hasn’t helped his jokes much. “We will go to the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and I joke that – because my background is the property industry – I’m promoting bricks and mortar,” says Bear, chuckling.
Becoming Lord Mayor at a time when the City of London is fending off blows to its domestic reputation because of rows over bankers’ bonuses, while its overseas status is threatened by the prospect of draconian regulation, Bear is far from bearish.
“Our house is being put in order and it’s taken a long time to do that,” he says.
“We’ve had a new coalition government, and they’ve started to coalesce. We did get a few little frights from Vince Cable when he started to criticise capitalism, but I think that the pre-election populist messages are now being put in to more practical, useful, forward-looking strategy, so we work very well with the government.
“In fact, when I spoke to the prime minister at the Lord Mayor’s banquet last month, he made the point that the City of London is important not only to the UK but to Europe as well and that he will do everything he can to support it.”
And UK plc, he says, is also on the up. “People will spend when they have confidence in their jobs,” says Bear. “We hit a low point two years ago but now we’ve started to tick up. Economic growth figures are 0.8% a quarter, year-on-year. There are still some shocks around – Ireland was one – but I think we’ll get over it.”
For City property, too, he says the prospects are positive. “You’ve got the next towers coming up, the Cheesegrater and all the others – a whole salad in the sky,” he says enthusiastically.
“That shows confidence. It’s a huge fillip to confidence in the City. The planning is there. They’re ready to go. Wherever the market is it will be a demand-led development cycle, not supply-led, which is what we had before.”
Bear adds: “Our vacancy rate in the City went up to about 14% two years ago and we’re now down to single figures, which is very healthy and creates a healthy tension in the market. Rents are rising.
“I think the last letting I saw was £62 per sq ft in the City, which is remarkable when you think it’s come up from £40 in the space of 18 months. So all the metrics tell me that we’re through the worst and we’re on the upturn.”
A property man through and through, the 57-year-old, Kenyan-born, former project engineer and international business development manager is clearly proud of the fabric of his adopted City.
“Building in the City has changed beyond all recognition over the past 25 years,” he says. “It’s really put us on the map. It’s more or less where New York and Chicago were in the 1950s and 1960s with all their iconic buildings – the Chrysler building, the Empire State building. Now, people aren’t talking about buildings in the US. They’re talking about London. And the fact that we can do this within a medieval street pattern I think is just amazing.”
He also believes that, with the addition of the new retail offer at One New Change, EC4, and a crop of new restaurants as well as the traditional tourist sites, the City can continue to attract visitors after hours.
Energy efficiency
Bear is serious about his wish to promote more energy-efficient buildings in the City, and elsewhere in the UK. A founding member of the British Council for Offices, Bear is evangelical about the need to create smart buildings that can not only generate their own heat and power but can also put that energy back into the grid when occupiers are not using it.
“I’ve done it in Spitalfields. We had a temporary swimming pool and we put a gas turbine in the chimney that heated the water, and we exported power to the national grid – and that was 10 years ago,” says Bear.
“And look at Heron Tower, for example. During the off-peak hours they make ice, which is used in its cooling system. Then through a heat exchange unit they can heat it. That’s what Gerald Ronson’s done, which is way ahead. So it’s both a way of making your building very efficient and a way of recycling.”
The right honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title of the head of the City of London Corporation, the municipal governing body of the City of London. The post has been in existence since 1189 and the first holder was Henry Fitz-Ailwin de Londonstone.
The mayor of the City of London has been elected by the City, rather than appointed by the sovereign, since 1215 when a royal charter was issued by King John. Lord Mayors are elected for terms of one year by the City’s livery companies, but since 1385, prior service as sheriff has been mandatory for election to the Lord Mayoralty. The Lord Mayor’s residence has been Mansion House since 1752.
Michael Bear was born in Nairobi, brought up in Cyprus and educated at Clifton College in Bristol. He studied civil engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and an MBA at Cranfield University. He has held senior positions in both the property and construction industries.
Over the past 33 years he worked first in the international construction industry, including China and West Africa, for Balfour Beatty. In the City, as chief executive of the Spitalfields Development Group, he was responsible for bringing the development at Spitalfields to a successful conclusion.
Bear is regeneration director at Hammerson and since 1993, managing director of Balfour Beatty Property, working on its development and PFI/PPP projects.
“I think the last letting I saw was £62 per sq ft in the City, which is remarkable when you think it’s come up from £40 in the space of 18 months. So all the metrics tell me that we’re through the worst and we’re on the upturn”
