Canadian developer Brookfield is looking to build a London office portfolio of as much as 5m sq ft, the man tasked with growing its UK presence said this morning.
Martin Jepson, who joined the company from Hammerson last August as senior vice-president of development and investment, said the business had a “significant” war chest, and saw London as an opportunity.
“Could we have four to five million square feet of office space? That would be an ambitious target that we would like to achieve, but we’re not going to achieve it overnight,” he said.
Brookfield aims to capitalise on its tenant database and build on its global platform, where it holds 87m sq ft of office space across the world.
“We’d be looking to exploit that platform through individual acquistions [of sites] and, over time, we’ll also look at corporate opportunities,” Jepson said.
He ruled out speculative development, and said Brookfield’s headline 100 Bishopsgate, EC2, scheme would only go ahead with a substantial prelet.
“The earliest we could deliver it is the first quarter of 2016 fully completed.”
damian.wild@estatesgazette.com
