British Land London Offices Event

RNS Number : 6191O

British Land Co PLC

21 September 2011

 



                                                21 September 2011

British Land London Offices Event

British Land is today hosting an analyst and investor event in London. The event will be focused on British Land's London Offices portfolio, and will include presentations from Tim Roberts, Head of Offices and other senior members of the Group's Offices team along with a tour around the Regent's Place estate. The presentations will provide further information on our Offices portfolio, the Central London development programme and the prospects for the business.

In recent years, our Offices portfolio has been significantly strengthened through the re-balancing of the portfolio to increase the exposure to the West End market, and the steps taken to improve the quality of our estate - notably to transform Regent's Place and revitalise Broadgate. The portfolio is now well positioned to benefit from London's strong attractions to businesses and investors and from a continuing shortage of supply of high quality office space. Our Central London development programme is now well underway and we are on site at all six of our committed schemes with the buildings scheduled for completion between 2012 and 2014. We have seen strong occupier interest and following the recent agreement with Debenhams at our Regent's Place estate, some 50% of our office developments are already pre-let.

Tim Roberts, Head of Offices at British Land, said: "We're looking forward to the opportunity today to talk about our London office portfolio.  Despite the challenging economic backdrop, we remain positive about the long-term outlook for London property and are confident about the future prospects for our Offices portfolio."

The presentations will be available on the British Land website: www.britishland.com. Audio recordings of the event will be available on Thursday 22 September.

British Land will be holding a Retail analyst and investor event on 7^th October which will include presentations by Charles Maudsley and other senior members of the Retail team, along with a tour of the Glasgow Fort Shopping Park.

Enquiries:

Investor Relations

Sally Jones, British Land                                                            020 7467 2942

Media

Pip Wood, British Land                                                               020 7467 2838

Guy Lamming/Gordon Simpson, Finsbury                                    020 7251 3801

Notes to Editors

About British Land

British Land is one of Europe's largest Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) with total assets, owned or managed, of £15.2 billion (British Land share £9.9 billion), as valued at 30 June 2011. Through our property and finance expertise we attract experienced partners to create properties and environments which are home to over 1,000 different organisations and visited byover 250 million people each year. Our property portfolio is focused on prime retail locations and Central London offices which attract high quality occupiers committed to long leases. Our occupancy rate of 98% and average lease length to first break of 11 years are among the highest of the major UK REITs.

Retail assets account for 64% of our portfolio, over 80% of which are located at prime out-of-town sites. Comprising around 27 million sq ft of retail space across 91 retail warehouse properties, 99 superstores, 12 shopping centres and 10 department stores, the retail portfolio is generally modern, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of formats. Active asset management delivers attractive space to both retailers and consumers.

London offices, located in the City and West End, comprise 33% of the portfolio (rising to an estimated 38% on completion of current developments) amounting to 7 million sq ft of office space including Broadgate, the premier City office campus (50% share) and Regent's Place in the West End. We are investing £1.1 billion to create Central London's largest committed office development programme which will deliver 2.2 million sq ft of high quality space by 2014, including a 700,000 sq ft building at 5 Broadgate, the 610,000 sq ft Leadenhall Building in London's insurance district and the 500,000 sq ft NEQ mixed use scheme at Regent's Place.

Our size and substance demands a responsible approach to business and we focus on five areas which matter most to us and our key stakeholders: managing buildings efficiently; developing sustainable buildings; enhancing biodiversity; exceeding customers' expectations and focusing on local communities. We believe leadership on issues such as sustainability helps drive our performance and is core to our corporate aim of building the best REIT in Europe.

Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com

 

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