Unibail-Rodamco, Europe's largest listed real estate company, has appointed Bertrand Julien-Laferriere to lead its new development unit, Unibail-Rodamco Development.
Unibail-Rodamco, Europe's largest listed real estate company, has appointed Bertrand Julien-Laferriere to lead its new development unit, Unibail-Rodamco Development.
Prior to joining Unibail-Rodamco, Bertrand Julien-Laferriere was CEO of Bail Investissement and CGW, a consortium jointly owned by Caisse des Depots, Goldman Sach's Whitehall and GE Real Estate. Before that he was responsible for international real estate and construction at Club Med and hotel group Accor. He started his career with architect Ricardo Bofill.
Unibail-Rodamco Development is being launched with a pipeline of 1.1 million m2 in retail projects, including expansions and new developments, Michael Dessolain, chief operating officer of French-Dutch Unibail-Rodamco, said in an interview with PropertyEU at the Mapic retail real estate fair in Cannes last week. Unibail-Rodamco is targeting annual double-digit returns for the new development company.
All existing development projects will be transferred to the new vehicle, Dessolain said. Eleven of the projects are located in France, two in Spain and one in Sweden. New markets including the Netherlands are also being studied. Dessolain sees the retail development company expanding in due course into a pan-European concern with activities in a large number of European countries.
During the interview, Dessolain expressed extreme satisfaction with the takeover of Rodamco, saying that both companies were, as expected, complementary. Dutch-based Rodamco is traditionally an investor and only started developing in 2000, while Paris-headquartered Unibail has been active as a developer for several decades and only started investing in the 1990s. The merged company has a portfolio of 95 shopping malls with a book value of EUR 24 bn, making it the largest retail developer-investor in Europe and the second largest in the world.
Dessolain added that Unibail-Rodamco believes that large shopping malls offer the best prospects in the coming years given new trends in the retail market.
Updated 21 November 2007