Siblings Steve and Clive Boultbee Brooks have built their investments into a £400m portfolio and are aiming to add £100m of acquisitions. Adam Coffer talks to the brothers who are, quite literally, poles apart
If it were not for the fact that they grew up sharing baths, clothes and parents, it is difficult to imagine how Steve and Clive Boultbee Brooks would be friends, let alone business partners.
The brothers behind a burgeoning portfolio of almost £400m have such distinct personalities that the vendor of one of their recent acquisitions questioned the legitimacy of their blood tie.
Steve, 41, is the London “face” of the company, and a man who struggles to satisfy an appetite for adventure. Clive, 39, is the financial mastermind of the business, a family man who anchors the group from offices in Hereford. But the brothers claim that the split personalities ensure they remain the best of partners.
“People say that if two managers agree on everything, get rid of one of them,” says Clive, grinning as Boultbee Land’s floating London office at Chelsea’s Cadogan Pier begins to rock with the swell. “Steve and I look at things entirely differently but never argue. The competitive drive for both of us to prove the other wrong is what makes us successful.”
Based in ladies’ loo
Established in 1987, Boultbee Land’s first base was a former ladies’ loo in Shoreditch that the brothers converted themselves. “I wouldn’t say we liked it so much we occupied the building but it was rent free,” recalls Steve. “In our first client meeting it took some explaining. But those early days were terrific.”
The brothers’ property empire was founded with very small investments and redevelopments in Shoreditch. “I lived on a canal boat in Islington,” recalls Steve, “and every day Clive would go out on his bike around Shoreditch and find out who owned what and who’d be prepared to sell.”
Their first profit-making deal was a 5,300 sq ft warehouse in Elder Street, E1. “We met up with a stockbroker who wanted to back us. We were in for £750,000 and sold for £1.3m nine months later. That’s how it began.” In the late 1980s, the brothers started to encounter cash-flow trouble. “Up until then, we’d been doing small development work,” says Clive, “so we had great capital values but nothing to pay the bills with.”
The duo had secured backing from a handful of Middle Eastern investors. Says Steve: “We told our overseas partners that we should forget profits and get out. They didn’t listen and some took big hits. But they always remembered that we advised them to get out while they could – so they came back to us.” And what about their personal fortunes? “We wanted to be millionaires before we were 30 – and we were. But when we were just over 30 we had lost most of it,” quips Steve.
Steve anxiously monitors his watch, apologising as he explains that he is “off for my stag weekend in Spain this afternoon – my last foray as a single man”. Best man Clive says he does not mind holding the fort for the next few months, while Steve and his new wife, Joanna, are flying Steve’s helicopter, unassisted, from Anchorage, Alaska, to Chile. “It is like a holiday for me too when Steve goes off on his adventures,” he says, “Adventures don’t make me tick. They do turn Steve on though. When he comes back, I am the one who is refreshed.”
He has had ample opportunity to “refresh” himself while his brother goes off to play. In recent years, Steve has been round the world on a two-year expedition, learned to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, trekked to the Everest base camp, climbed the Ruanzori Mountains in Uganda, and been a kayak instructor on the Zambezi river. Even in April, he went on an expedition to drive from the US to Russia across the treacherous Bering Strait (see box, p30).
In the early 1990s, the brothers saw an opportunity to recover their millions. They began to buy from receivers at double-digit yields. They were back, and Clive began to find ways to “keep a good team busy”. By the latter part of the decade, the Boultbee portfolio had easily surpassed £100m.
What goes into that portfolio has always been picked solely by one agent – Peter Goldstein of Michael Elliott, who has overseen the growth of the portfolio over the past seven years. Clive says: “Of course, he takes fees like a normal agent – but if he doesn’t think an investment is right for us, he will sacrifice his potential fee and kill the deal. That kind of trust is beautiful.”
By the late 1990s, Goldstein had convinced the brothers that they should be tackling bigger investments. Between 1999 and 2002, Goldstein bought more than £150m worth of stock from Leo Noe’s REIT Asset Management, International House in Chiltern Street, W1, from Portfolio Holdings for £40m, as well as a number of smaller portfolios and investments from the likes of Burford, Chelsfield and Great Portland Estates. Investment agent Franco Sidoli, who has represented clients in around £200m-worth of sales to the brothers, says: “We’ve done two or three deals with them and have enjoyed a very good relationship. They are very easy to deal with, good people, and they always deliver.”
Keen to tidy up the portfolio
Goldstein says the aim is to build up the portfolio to more than £500m, with a rental income of £40m pa. “We will target minimum lot sizes of £15m up to £60m-£70m. We have identified smaller assets to dispose of because we are keen to tidy up the portfolio. You can’t know all the markets all over the country and we have outgrown a number of holdings.”
Goldstein adds that his relationship with the Boultbee brothers is a rare one. “In many ways, they are complete opposites. But there are so many synergies in terms of drive and desire to succeed that it makes it easy to work with them.”
Boultbee is backed primarily by Lehman Brothers’ aggressively acquisitive real estate division and Middle Eastern investors. Clive, who structures funding and monitors the accounts and rent collection for the group, boasts: “We are also still with the same partners on a number of deals today as we were in the early days. We very rarely put in under 50% of equity but we do rely upon a number of key partners. You do better with partners because it allows for more turnover and flow.”
The Midlands has proved a profitable stomping ground for Boultbee’s development division, now headed by Nigel Jeffrey. One of its earliest developments was the Holly Park Industrial Estate, a 100,000 sq ft shed scheme. This was followed by a 30,000 sq ft office scheme on Broad Street and, in April, the company made its largest investment in the region, paying REIT more than £30m for the 250,000 sq ft (23,225m2) Clock Towers shopping centre in Rugby.
The deal marked a break with the norm for the brothers, but Clive says: “There is so much we can addto the shopping centre. There is tremendous potential to manage that asset. We are keen on shopping centres, even though the sector is very competitive right now.”
Ironically, it is Midlands development that is leaving the brothers most exposed today. A 185,000 sq ft (17,190m2) warehouse scheme in Birmingham – Hurricane Park – was speculatively built and completed last month. Boultbee is trying to let it at around £5.75 per sq ft, meaning that a potential rental income of more than £1m pa is still to be realised.
It sounds as though they should be a bit worried about this, but instead, Clive stresses they’re in business for more than the money. “My ethos is enjoyment. No matter how eager I am to succeed, this business is nothing more than a means to an end. When I stop enjoying going to work every day we stop.”
Steve concurs, but admits to harbouring bigger ambitions. “It is a happy, family, matey company. But, on a broader level, we’re trying to liven up the whole property industry.”
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Steven Boultbee Brooks (r) |
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Born: Lichfield, 1961 Education: University 1982-85: Engineering, Nottingham. 1987-present: Boultbee Land Lifestyle: Just married and lives in south-west London – when not on expeditions, flying helicopters pole-to-pole, or piloting vehicles across the Bering Strait. Says he would “love to have kids soon”. |
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Clive Boultbee Brooks (l) |
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Born: Lichfield, 1963 Education: University 1983-1986: Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester 1987-present: Boultbee Land Lifestyle: Lives in Herefordshire and is married with one daughter, aged 9, and two sons, aged 3 and 7. Enjoys farming and rural pursuits – walking and shooting. |
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The ultimate overland adventure – until Russians object |
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Steve Boultbee Brooks is not your traditional property player. His appetite for adventure reached new heights in April, when he attempted to succeed where scores of explorers had failed. He and a team of five set out to become the first people to drive an overland vehicle across the Bering Strait – the constantly moving ice pack that separates Russia from Alaska. They crewed Snowbird 6 – a 15,000lb all-terrain contraption of Brooks’ own design – from Wales, Alaska (pop 180) 56 miles across the strait, combating temperatures of-40¡C and breaking ice along the way. Although the expedition earned Brooks and his team a place in history, it was not a complete success. They were refused admission to Russia, so they were only able to make it half way. Atthis point, they were forced to retreat under threat of arrest. Brooks says: “We had visas for Russia but nobody had ever made it that far before and the Russians weren’t expecting us. We proved it was possible to drive across the strait. That is something I am enormously proud of and it makes me hungrier to achieve more.” |
