Evans of Leeds is stepping up its development programme with help from Land Securities, the UK’s largest property company.
Land Securities, which built the £100m White Rose Centre near Leeds in a joint venture with Evans and Yorkshire Water, will help pay for a four-strong team of surveyors to look for more development projects.
Evans’ managing director John Bell said: “Land Sec-urities will contribute towards the cost of the team. We are looking for larger schemes in the retail and industrial markets; £20m-plus for retail and a bit more for industrial.”
The White Rose Centre, which opened earlier this year, was largely behind the 12% leap in Evans’ net asset value to 133p per share for the year ended March 31. Pretax profit jumped 10% to £12.6m, helped by sales, while gross rents edged up 3% to £26m.
King Sturge’s year-end valuation showed that the investment portfolio, excluding the shopping centre and other joint ventures, remained virtually unchanged at £273m.
Evans’ 72-year-old chairman, John Humphries, also announced that he is stepping down. He will be replaced by John Padovan, 59, a long-serving non-executive director who is also on the boards of brewing giant Whitbread and contractor Tilbury Douglas.
Humphries said that he wants to remain on the board as a non-executive director “for the next year or two”.
