British Land’s outgoing chief Chris Grigg regrets “people decisions” but hails new CEO as retail estate slides 14%

Chris Grigg, the outgoing chief executive of London’s biggest commercial landlord British Land, today said while he wished he had exited some of its retail properties earlier, he was leaving the company far stronger than when he joined.

In his last outing to the City before handing over to new CEO Simon Carter after 12 years in the job, Grigg said the decisions he regrets most are always on personnel.

“The hardest things are the people decisions,” he said. “Whether hiring or retiring people. If I look back there are certain ones I would have done quicker.”

He said: “It’s that sense that you see great people and say: I should have promoted them more quickly because they’re fantastic. I should have moved them faster up the organisation.”

“But bringing Simon Carter back in to the business was a great decision, so even on that stuff I am pretty relaxed."

Carter himself left British Land to work as finance director at Quintain Estates and Logicor before Grigg lured him back in as finance director in 2018.

Grigg sold much but not all of British Land’s retail estate and has previously acknowledged that he regretted not having done more ahead of the decade-long decline in bricks and mortar shopping.

Today he said: “There were times when we could have gone a bit quicker but hindsight is a great thing, and at the time we were investing tremendous amounts into the London campuses - that idea of grouping buildings together in a coherent whole takes years to do.”

British Land sees its “campuses” - projects with a mixture of offices and retail clustered around each other, as the future. Projects such as the Broadgate Centre in the City and Paddington Basin have proved successful and retail is a crucial element as office workers want shops and  restaurants on hand.

In its half-year figures today British Land showed retail remained tough, with the value of its shopping centres falling 14.9% against its office portfolio’s more robust decline of 3.1%.

Rent collections on retail for the September quarter have panned out far better than the 50% reported last month. Today 62% of retail tenants have paid up, down from 69% for the June quarter.

Office rent collections remained solid at 98%.

Simon Carter said: “In retail, some have really been impacted. Leisure and small independents in particular. Therefore we have given them forgiveness on the rent for March and June. For bigger businesses it is just a case of working through customer by customer and agreeing equitable outcomes.”

That generally means reducing rents for a period, extending leases or doing a deal across the retailer’s whole portfolio.