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The Duke of Westminster’s property firm has reported a surge in earnings because of fast-rising rents in its huge portfolio of workplaces, flats and outlets in London’s high-end Mayfair and Belgravia neighbourhoods.
Grosvenor, which owns £8.2bn of property, stated its underlying revenue rose 16.5 per cent to £86.4mn final 12 months.
The sprawling group managed by the Grosvenor household, who began growing Mayfair greater than 300 years in the past, is the most important of a number of surviving aristocratic estates that personal swaths of central London. Its property holdings make Hugh Grosvenor, the present Duke, one of many UK’s richest individuals.
The group additionally introduced a management shake-up. Chief govt Mark Preston will stand down in September after 17 years, handing the function to James Raynor — at present head of the UK property division.
Chief monetary officer Rob Davis will retire and get replaced by Debbie Lee, who’s finance chief of the UK division.
Preston will stay as “govt trustee”, a publish he has held since 2017. He stated the function entailed serving as “adviser to the Grosvenor household, particularly to the Duke, on actually all issues”.
As chief govt, he has pushed efforts to diversify the group past its core property in London, launching a global funding division and stepping up Grosvenor’s dealmaking to fund new investments.
The group in January offered a £306mn stake in a part of the Mayfair property to the Norwegian oil fund in a three way partnership deal. It additionally offered its stake within the Liverpool One procuring centre, which it developed, to Land Securities late final 12 months.
In its annual outcomes, Grosvenor reported that its occupancy charges elevated to 97 per cent, having steadily recovered from lows of about 90 per cent after the coronavirus pandemic — which helped drive greater earnings.
Davis stated the rise in earnings was “pushed by a mixture of sturdy rental development, significantly within the UK, excessive occupancy . . . and tight management on our overhead”.
Its portfolio is almost 40 per cent workplaces, with 1 / 4 in residential and 20 per cent in retail.
“In opposition to a difficult 12 months for the worldwide economic system, marked by mediocre development and rising geopolitical tensions, our enterprise has delivered a robust set of monetary outcomes,” stated Preston.
He added that the group needed to speed up its spending on a multibillion-pound pipeline of recent developments and investments. “Discovering methods to launch capital to allow us to speculate is what that is all about. Traditionally we’d simply be sequential about it. That may be a completely reputable method. However naturally one desires to do extra of it sooner.”
Its tasks embrace an overhaul of Grosvenor Sq. and a £500mn redevelopment centred round South Molton Road, close to Bond Road station, in partnership with Mitsui Fudosan.
