SEGRO is shaking up its strategy and launching a recruitment drive for data scientists, as chief executive David Sleath (pictured) tasks an individual he calls a “disruptive thinker” with overseeing its new innovation division.
This week, SEGRO announced that its chief investment officer Phil Redding, who had clocked up 23 years at the business, is to depart. His exit comes amid a restructure that will see SEGRO’s chief financial officer, former investment banker Soumen Das, oversee a new division covering strategy, investment and innovation.
“Soumen has been with business for four years – he already had the proptech area under his wing as well as a very well-oiled financial machine and had the capacity to take on more,” Sleath tells EG. “He is an investment banker by background and a disruptive thinker.”
The warehouse developer faces a conundrum that will be familiar to many of its peers: how to prepare staff for the future in light of rapid technological change. SEGRO is celebrating its 100-year anniversary by deploying cash to modernise, and forward-thinking Das will be a central player in SEGRO’s tech revolution, according to Sleath.
His CV includes nine years at UBS as a real estate-focused executive director; time with UK mall owner Liberty International, where he coordinated the demerger of the firm into two businesses in 2010; and six years’ at Capco as managing director and chief financial officer.
The reshuffle comes as SEGRO finalises a portfolio overhaul and focuses on investing in technology and development.
Sleath says: “We had a lot of heavy lifting to do from 2012 onwards. We created then a separate investment team to look at what we invested in and what we didn’t do. It was quite a big change to create that structure at the time. We did a lot of selling of non-core assets, old secondary industrial offices. We had to get rid of these and invest in modern warehouses and logistics.
“We’ve now been through a big change programme. That element of the job is largely done. Our ongoing investments are more ‘business as usual’ so decisions can be made by the local operating businesses.”
Local investment activities will now fall to six existing operational teams which come under the leadership of chief operating officer Andy Gulliford. These units cover London; Thames Valley; UK logistics; Southern Europe; Northern Europe and Central Europe.
The company will now focus on investing in technology, both in terms of its people and its assets. SEGRO plans to bulk up the proptech and digital teams that now sit in the new division. “We had already created this team as we had been working on this for a year to 18 months,” Sleath says. “We have got a small group and will be recruiting into this.
“We are looking for data scientists. We want to use data better when we install centres and pilot a dozen or so warehouses and we want to put in sensors so we can capture data.”
SEGRO is also looking at ramping up its development arm to upgrade its assets. “About two years ago we shifted our focus from buying a lot of product to developing, so we ramped up our development programme, and tripled our volume of development. We are spending £500m a year on development – there’s a lot of new capital,” says Sleath. “As we do that going forward we are having to think about technology, clean energy, fibre optic cables, taking carbon out of buildings – all these things are evolving quite fast. We bought a number of assets last year and we are now just trying to deploy big chunks of capital.”
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