I wanted to be an architect, but my drawing skills just weren’t up to scratch. But this job means I am still involved, just in a different way. St Christopher’s Place is a mixed-use development in a very attractive part of London’s West End, close to Bond Street. It is the biggest holding in our portfolio and we like it because it has a mixture of retail, residential, offices and restaurants, which means we are not exposed to just one sector. There are 44 individual buildings in the estate and there is a nice ambience to the area, which has a piazza in the centre. There are very few opportunities in central London to invest in an estate like this. Currently, there is a really good diversity in the occupants. It is a great asset because we can manage and engineer the tenant line-up and improve the mix over time, depending on market conditions. Because we own the entire estate, we get the benefits of increased rents and higher capital values across the whole area. This is always going to be a very attractive part of town. We manage this estate to generate income and then benefit from increased value of the properties.
F&C property fund favours regional office buildings, industrial spaces and logistics sites in the UK. Richard Kirby, manager of the £1.2bn ($1.6bn) F&C Commercial Property Trust said the fund was looking at cities outside London where commercial landlords are facing increased competition from serviced office operators such as WeWork. Kirby said falling yields in London have prompted the fund to cut its holdings in the capital over the past couple of years.