Unlike the US, there isn’t a great deal of mobility between the public and private sectors in the UK. Make no mistake: the property world on this side of the pond is a worse place for it.
It was New Yorker Carl Weisbrod who drew the contrast at a Movers & Shakers Breakfast at the Dorchester last Friday. Weisbrod is the celebrated director of the New York City Department of City Planning and chairman of the New York City Planning Commission.
There, he has spearheaded efforts to bring the public and private sectors together, drawing on his experience in both and providing a blueprint for business improvement districts in the UK.
Weisbrod led the city’s efforts to transform Times Square. He has helped turn Hudson Square into a dynamic hub for the creative industries and new housing. And as founding president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, the largest BID in the US, he set in train the transformation of the financial district into a 24-7 neighbourhood.
It is his work in, and experience of, both sectors that has equipped him to do so.
In the UK there aren’t many with similar CVs. The late Clive Dutton, whose work in Birmingham and Newham contributed greatly to their regeneration, was one. Paul Clark – of Capita property and infrastructure and previously of CBRE, Oxford city council and the Olympic Park Legacy Company – another.
And then there is Ben Denton, who left developer First Base to become strategic director of housing, regeneration and property and was then promoted in the big reshuffle last year. It was a move trumpeted by Jackie Sadek in EG as “luminous”.
Now Denton has said he will return to the private sector in September, joining Keepmoat, the 11th largest housebuilder in the country as group strategy and business development director.
It is not great news in the short term at least for Westminster’s property community after last year’s departure of long-serving director Rosemarie MacQueen. And it suggests that the demands on the council – and its limited resources – make working life challenging.
But putting that to one side, it is the sort of move we should be championing. The more senior figures move easily between the public and private sectors, the better the understanding of both sides’ needs and constraints will be. That can only be a good thing.
Here’s an intriguing, inevitable consequence of the Cushman-DTZ deal. Since 2013 both firms have both been advising WR Berkley Group on its landmark Scalpel tower at 52-54 Lime Street, EC3. The company wants to retain joint agents after the deal completes in the autumn, which would require another adviser to be brought in to work alongside the new Cushman & Wakefield (incorporating DTZ).
Should that appointment come to pass it will be a dent in the better together argument at the heart of the merger. It highlights the difficulty of increasing, or even maintaining, the separate revenues after large commercial agents combine. And it may not be an isolated case.
But it is only a dent to the rationale. Economies of scale will follow. The attractiveness to clients with a truly global footprint is already apparent. And it brings greater choice at the top end of a market where shortlists do not run long.
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