Intu collapse will cause a drag on all shopping centres and their banks - so watch out

Shopping centres already tumbled in value by about 30% last year — depending which data you look at. Intu’s next numbers were due out in a few weeks and would have been ugly, especially after it barely managed to get 10% of its quarterly rents in this week.

British Land — which thankfully has office space to shore itself up with in these grim times for retail real estate — may get some respite from its portfolio losses by picking up the contract to run Intu’s jewel-in-the-crown Trafford Centre.

But it’s far from clear who is going to end up running the rest when the banks take control; it takes skill to operate a beast like Lakeside. From what one hears, there aren’t queues of operators banging on the doors to take over the contracts. CBRE is conflicted out. Ellandi, another UK mall operator, is said to be interested but whether it has the ability to take on Intu’s bigger sites is a moot point.

Why on earth the banks were daft enough to lend to Intu in the first place is anyone’s guess. It’s been clear for years that it was on a downhill slope.

Now they’re left with a major headache entirely of their own making. What a mess.