January’s big agency news in Northern Ireland was John Martin leaving Whelan Partnership for Osborne King after 25 years.
Martin is renowned throughout the province as a specialist leisure agent with extensive knowledge of the local leisure circuit.
His move has signalled the increasing desire for Northern Ireland’s agencies to adopt specialists or flaunt themselves as having specialist agency knowledge.
From Whelan’s – a practice known as Northern Ireland’s premier leisure agency – he took with him several clients and his colleague, Gavin Weir.
Osborne King’s main aim in approaching Martin was so the agency, well known for its big retail deals, could establish its own leisure department – something the firm had not had for more than 30 years.
OK simply wanted to expand the business, says the company’s director Robert Ditty. “This is a new department for OK. It’s so specialist it’s hard to grow into,” he adds.
More agents are moving into the investment side, while others are trying their hands at retail.
“There’s no doubt that, compared with five or six years ago, we are more specialised. Agents are becoming increasingly departmentalised,” says Bill Kennedy of Colliers CRE.
OK’s Ditty adds that client expectations have also changed, and they now expect a certain level of specialist knowledge.
Bill Woosley, managing director of his own pub/leisure company, Beannchor, and a client of John Martin’s, says: “I bought three quarters of my pubs through specialists because they get more business brought to them. In NI I have tended to stick to people who just deal with the licence trade.”
Whether this is a sensible thing in a small market like Northern Ireland, which has a smaller population than Greater Manchester, is cause for debate among the province’s agents.
There is debate as to whether it is good to have specialists so that clients can feel they are well looked after. Or is it better to have all-round market knowledge?
The outcome seems to depend on how big the practice is. The bigger the agency the more likely it can afford to have people dedicated to one speciality, and more contacts to provide work for that one agent.
This was certainly the case with Martin.
He admits that one reason he answered the OK call was because of the company’s size.
“I was offered the opportunity with OK, the second-biggest agent in Northern Ireland. I was more than happy. I was going from a partnership to a board of 10, and already it’s opened up two or three avenues that wouldn’t have happened – more contacts and things OK was already dealing with.”
Paddy Brennan, investment director with Lambert Smith Hampton, Northern Ireland’s largest agency, became one of the province’s first investment specialists when he moved back to Belfast from England eight years ago.
“In my experience coming back to Northern Ireland, it was crucial that I worked for a large practice to tap into their broad client base.
“This provided me with a valuable leg-up. Because of my experience in the Great Britain market, I was able to demonstrate to our local clients that we could provide quality service in sourcing and acquiring investment in England and Scotland,” says Brennan.
He adds that he did more than £152m worth of deals last year in order to demonstrate the benefits of having a specialist.
Brennan has also been able to bring in another specialist – Donal McCann, who says: “On the back of the firm base of LSH, I was able to establish my own contacts.”
Given the healthy investment position, it is understandable that several Northern Ireland firms are looking to dip specialist fingers into this lucrative investment market.
Lisneys is keen to continue in a market where it did £100m worth of business last year, as is Osborne King.
Colliers CRE is a company at the crossroads between specialising and remembering its generalist roots.
Although the company does a lot of retail work, and has, like its London counterpart, become more departmental, Kennedy says: “Because we are small, we still have to know our clients. At all times we have to be conscious of the amount of work we have here. We have to be careful of setting ourselves up in a market that is not big enough.”
Some agents believe that firms should be shouting about their ability to multi-task.
Even though Lisneys is proud of its investment achievements in 2002, it still wants to keep a hand in other markets.
“We specialise in all areas, but we don’t champion ourselves,” says Andrew Marsden of Lisneys. “What we have done well in is investment and retail, but I would like to think that we will always have the ability to deal with any sector, be it office, industrial, management or retail,” he adds.
Agents also believe that certain clients would rather deal with one person who could take charge of all their business.
“Specialists roll in and they don’t sit well with clients,” believes Barney Goan, partner at McKibbin Commercial.
While not concurring totally with Goan, Ditty does agree that there are still clients who are “more relaxed dealing with one agent”.
“At the bottom end and at the top end of the market, they like one point of contact,” says Ditty, adding that they also like to know there are layers below that one contact who have knowledge in other fields.
Goan is one of a few Northern Ireland agents who debate whether those claiming to be specialists are actually just that. And the investment market has taken the brunt of the scepticism.
“I don’t want to be scathing to my colleagues, but for some firms to say that they have a specialist in investment is a wee bit glorified. There are people here who have a forte, but they are not specialists.”
Regardless, however, of any agents’ talents, economics and a fickle market will always be there to work against specialists. A good example is Insignia Richard Ellis Gunne.
When Guy Hollis set up IREG in 1998, he specialised in business space, letting the likes of Lanyon Place and the original Sirocco deal. But the market went quiet, and now the agent has made forays into leisure and consultancy.
Brian Lavery, who now runs the office, says without any hint of bitterness that no-one in Northern Ireland “can afford to be a specialist”.
The economy is a difficult animal to control, but at least added competition in the form of another agency with a leisure specialist entering the market does not seem to be affecting John Martin’s former colleagues at the Whelan Partnership.
Even though Martin took some clients with him, Brian Nixon, a partner at Whelan’s, says that they have now been replaced, and he is talking excitedly about an historic building that he will soon bring onto the market.
He is also keen to report that the company does have other strings to its bow – such as acting for Marks & Spencer and McDonald’s.
So, it seems that even when someone is thought of as a specialist in Northern Ireland, it pays, unless the agent is in a large company, to keep a finger in many other pies.
If it were any other big British city, then being a specialist within a certain sector would be expected and would certainly not hamper career prospects.
Even in Dublin, firms such as CB Hamilton Osborne King are desperately seeking investment specialists.
But Northern Ireland’s size makes it difficult for such specialists to grow. And some believe that specialising does not help an agent’s career at all.
Barney Goan, partner with McKibbin Commercial, illustrates why by looking at investment.
“People will get their wings clipped if they are only doing investment. They might spend 10 months looking out the window. You can’t just have the one guy sitting here just doing investment because he’s going to get rusty,” he says.
One specialist, who did not want to be named, says this is true – which is why she believed it was better to be with a larger firm that could afford to pay people through the leaner times.
Ultimately, however, no matter how large the company or the market, the only way a specialist can really survive in Northern Ireland is via the personal contacts they make.
According to Lambert Smith Hampton’s Paddy Brennan, the firm’s investment specialist: “It’s good if you have made your contacts, because you can work for a big firm and still not do well.”
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How should expertise be delivered? |
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“I was going from a partnership to a board of 10, and already it’s opened up two or three avenues that wouldn’t have happened – more contacts and things OK was dealing with” John Martin Osborne King |
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“Coming back to Northern Ireland, it was crucial that I worked for a large practice to tap into their broad client base. This provided me with a valuable leg-up.” Paddy Brennan LSH |
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“We have done well in investment and retail, but I would like to think that we will always have the ability to deal with any sector, be it office, industrial, management or retail” Andrew Marsden Lisneys |
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“On the back of the firm base that I got in Lambert Smith Hampton, I was able to establish my own contacts sourcing good quality produce” Donal McCann LSH |
