Shed investor became architect of northern urban regeneration
The Times
June 12, 2007
BYLINE: David Quinn
WHILE its name suggests a company devoted to the UK’s capital city, Allied London’s top achievement to date has been in Manchester.
Since joining Allied London in 1995, Mike Ingall, the chief executive, has been the architect of the company’s rebirth, culminating in Spinningfields. He took a publicly quoted South-eastern investor in offices and sheds and repositioned it as a private leader of northern urban regeneration.
Spinningfields is the biggest example of Allied London’s core strategy -to buy secondary, partially vacant properties, to expand surrounding ownerships and to create a masterplan for redevelopment before selling. It took a similar approach at the Brunswick in Bloomsbury, Central London, as well as the office-led Skypark scheme in Glasgow, which it sold for £ 90 million in 2005.
Ingall says: “These schemes are created out of buying existing assets yielding 6-9 per cent. Development takes time but is less risky because, while we are creating a masterplan, we are working the existing asset and creating value that can be realised should the final scheme not come to fruition.”
Prior to 2000, he oversaw Allied London’s purchase of a series of retail centres around the country, in ostensibly unglamorous towns such as St Albans, Carlisle and Burgess Hill.
“We bought, refurbished, repositioned about 12 retail centres, converted them to mixed use with leisure and restaurants, and sold them back to the institutional market.”
The company, which delisted in 2000 and has just 26 full-time staff, is owned 20 per cent by its management, 40 per cent by Royal Bank of Scotland and 40 per cent by Jamie Ritblat’s Delancey, after a £ 500 million management buyout last year.
Although Ingall does not rule out further investment in the North if the deal is right, he sees London as the bedrock for the company’s growth. It also owns Pelham Homes, which has options on 3,000 acres in Sussex, Kent and Essex.
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