Eyebrows will have been raised among the top tier agents this week at the appointment of second-tier Colliers by St Modwen to aid the search for a joint venture partner for the reconstruction of the Elephant & Castle shopping centre. The faded-pink mall is to be stripped to the bone, and rebuilt with 1,000 flats towering on top for good measure – and profit.
Chief executive Tony Horrell did not speak of this instruction over breakfast last week. Instead, the former head of capital markets at Jones Lang LaSalle spoke in his basso tone of the 60 senior staff who have departed since he joined in 2009. And how he spends a good deal of time in hotel lobbies persuading fresh talent to join what he says is a very different Colliers.
The pre-pack sale in March to Canadian saviour First Service extinguished a mountainous deficit of £160m. Horrell says turnover of the largely debt-free business “will have a six in front of it” this year – in other words, somewhere north of £60m. It is much the same as the 12th-placed agent had in this year’s EG league tables, and a number that Horrell hopes to grow.
The 325 West End employees are split between two offices in Marylebone Lane and Welbeck Street. A coming together will shortly take place at 50 George Street, which sits mid-point between Knight Frank’s Baker Street HQ and Manchester Square. Here 33,150 sq ft of space has been taken over five floors. This will allow for a “dedicated executive client lounge and vast, flexible meeting and entertaining space,” says David Hume of Colliers.
A good deal less of the space will be taken up by filing cabinets. Almost all are being chucked out. The firm is going to courageously embrace all-electronic filing. What fun that will be for remaining members of the old guard.
Those fully embracing New Colliers will be encouraged to know that most of the breakfast chat was about how links to Asia, where Colliers is a top-tier agent, are starting to pay off. Especially in China – a place apparently filled with investors looking to joint venture in London.
PS: the bosses of two top-tier UK agents have separately been in China in the past two weeks.
Action against valuers
An interesting meeting with a moderately angry Irish millionaire at his Chelsea home this week. “Why has nobody taken action against valuers?” says Philip Marley, who is planning to do just that. The 41-year-old developer made a €30m fortune in 2005 when he sold his Irish student housing business to a fellow Irishman. “They indebted it up to the kazoo. I bought it back for €1 in late 2007,” says Marley, whose life is as colourful as his words.
The former advertising man divides his time between London, Dublin and Los Angles. Here he has been pictured embracing one Dana Wilkey, a star of the TV show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The pair are putting on a show called Rich and Ditched. “It’s about a bunch of 40-plus divorcees living in Malibu,” says Marley.
He is also planning an interesting variant on student housing that will bring like-minded communities of young folk together.
Meanwhile, Marley wants revenge for the common man and woman – those indebted up to their respective kazoos by building societies, which lent them far too much money between 2005-07 on the word of valuers. “It was the biggest f****** heist in history,” says Marley. “Nobody has asked the right questions.”
His right question is this: “How come the valuers have walked away from this debt fiasco with no redress?”
Marley has encouraged three US hard-nosed lawyers to come to the UK to help claimants seek compensation. “Litigation is the new black,” he warns, before opening a folder marked with the innocent sounding name, Shrewsbury.
“We wanted it to sound English.” Shrewsbury will be advertising in January for clients willing to put their name to class-action suites against lenders and valuers. “We are getting a panel of barristers together. We are getting ready to rock and roll.”
