EDITOR’S COMMENT I love it when BlackRock boss Larry Fink writes his annual CEOs letter. It is always an inspirational read. It is the underlining by a huge business that profit and purpose are not, and should not, be mutually exclusive.
This year’s letter unashamedly points out the phenomenal power that capitalism has to respond to human needs. Capitalism is not a dirty word. We need it to facilitate all the changes required to safeguard humanity and the planet. And we need to shout about how it can – and will – do this.
Ordinarily, I’d keep going here with my mini love letter to Mr Fink, but I don’t need to look over the pond for an inspirational business leader this year, I don’t need to turn to BlackRock’s website to read words that bring about a feeling of hope. I have all that right here in the UK. I have all that right here in EG.
This week, we are really excited to bring you an in-depth interview with not just one but five of the new leaders of real estate, the new guardians of some of our biggest listed real estate businesses.
EG brought together the new chief executives of British Land, Landsec, Hammerson, St Modwen and Harworth to share with us, you and each other their plans about how they will lead their businesses out of the Covid crisis and how they hope to steward the real estate industry through one of the most transformational eras we have ever known.
And I’m very happy to say that each one of them is just as inspirational as Fink and, like him, recognise the challenges that we, the sector and the planet faces and, importantly, the role they have to play in addressing them.
The tenures of Simon Carter, Mark Allan, Rita-Rose Gagné, Sarwjit Sambhi and Lynda Shillaw will – in their own words – be about showcasing the “art of the possible”, about putting their heads above the parapet and making real estate a sector to be proud of.
These five new leaders know what the issues are that they have to tackle to be able to run successful businesses. ESG was a big part of our conversation, the S in particular. Everyone knows how important responding to climate change is, but how to do it at scale, as one, and in an economically sound way was a big debate.
Allan is frank about it. “If you were a single business saying we’re going to do everything sustainably in the sector at the moment, you wouldn’t be competitive today. You wouldn’t buy anything. No one would lease space from you if you put all of that cost into it,” he says. “So there has to be something from a policy perspective.”
He’s right, of course and, until the playing field is levelled, that cost of truly delivering on ESG is hindering not just real estate’s but the nation’s ability to meet its targets. Fink says as much in his letter, so Allan must be right.
Particularly encouraging was the leaders’ focus on people as the most important business driver (another Finkian trait) and the need for real estate to modernise and improve its use of language.
No one outside of this little world of ours will understand what real estate does and can do until the industry’s leaders talk about the sector in the same language – a language that people understand and that doesn’t conjure up false images.
But after 90 minutes of conversation with these new leaders, which you can read on pages 15-21, I have hope that something good is coming. More hope than that which I usually take from Fink’s letter. These are our current custodians of the sector and if they stand by their words, the future – notwithstanding some bumps – of the industry looks to be in some pretty good hands.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
