Pioneer leaves leading real estate company in great shape
Guillaume Poitrinal has won the prestigious IP Real Estate Outstanding Industry Contribution Award 2013 as he began the next chapter of his career, having just stepped down as chief executive officer of the listed French commercial real estate group Unibail-Rodamco at the age of 45. A highly respected figure in the European real estate sector, Poitrinal has also served as chairman of the European of the European Real Estate Association (EPRA) between 2009 and 2011.
Clash of the titans
Poitrinal graduated from Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) Business School in Paris with a master’s degree in law. He has spent the majority of his working life redefining real estate and improving the quality of the property sector. His tenure at Unibail-Rodamco goes back to 1995 and following various senior management positions within the group; he took over as chief executive officer at the age of 37 in 2005. As CEO, he was a key architect in the merger of the then French group Unibail and its Dutch rival, Rodamco Europe. The partnership has gone from strength to strength ever since, growing fourfold to become the market leading commercial real estate development group in Europe, with listings on the Paris and Amsterdam stock exchanges.
Economy of scale
The merger enabled the new group to realign its focus on large shopping centre industry in continental Europe. This became possible with an innovative disposal policy of gradually selling off smaller assets to generate the capital to invest €9bn in prime developments. These include So Ouest in Paris’s chic western suburbs, the Lyon Confluence commercial centre in the heart of Lyon, the Rivetoile centre in Strasbourg, Rouen’s Docks 76 and, outside France, the Forum Nacka complex in Stockholm. Much of this renewed investment and development came during and after the financial crisis of 2008.
Poitrinal’s leadership and vision enabled Unibail-Rodamco to operate during the ensuring economic uncertainty and market volatility and remain Europe’s largest listed commercial retail group. Unibail-Rodamco has a large portfolio consisting of some 88 shopping centres of which 54 serve more than six million visits per year in the main cities of the countries within which it operates. It has adopted a new marketing approach and its influential four-star customer care and service-ratings system is helping redefine the commercial approach to the shopping centre sector.
“Poitrinal has also spear- headed the move towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly approach to large retail projects with the first green lease for a shopping complex in 2009. At EPRA, he oversaw the revisions of the association’s by-laws and working practices, and introduced a new governance structure as a consequence”
Shopping list
Poitrinal has left Unibail-Rodamco in a healthy position and the capacity to continue to expand at an ambitious rate. The company has €7bn earmarked to be invested over the next five years. This will allow it to spearhead the emergence of a new generation of large shopping and leisure centres, offices, convention centres and exhibition venues in major cities across Europe. Retail is not the only sector that Poitrinal helped consolidate at Unibail-Rodamco. He oversaw improvements to the office portfolio with the sale of mature assets, such as Coeur Défense, and reinvestment in new value-added developments. He then merged the group’s exhibition centre holdings with the Paris Chamber of Commerce to create two new leading European exhibition and convention centres, Viparis and Comexposium.
Lest we forget
Poitrinal has also spearheaded the move towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly approach to large retail projects with the first green lease for a shopping complex in 2009. At EPRA, he oversaw the revisions of the association’s by-laws and working practices, and introduced a new governance structure as a consequence. This involved the expansion of its board to 35 members to enable greater sector representation and facilitate better oversight at the same time that EPRA was widening its role to address the challenges of greater regulation. Poitrinal has said he is keen to explore new ground. The real estate industry will be keen for him to return to the fray. At 45, he has plenty of time to do just that.
In good company
Guillaume Poitrinal is in good company as the winner of the ninth IP Real Estate Awards’ Outstanding Industry Contribution title as he joins the institutional global real estate industry’s elite, such as former winners Paul McNamara and Andrea Carpenter.
His win, following his ground-breaking work at Unibail-Rodamco, a listed real estate development group, also demonstrates the diverse nature of the global institutional property market. Last year a pension fund won the award; the year before that the accolade went to a sustainability benchmarking project.
In 2012, the National Pension Service, the large pension fund of South Korea, won the award for its ambitious expansion of its real estate exposure in adverse conditions.
In 2011, it was the turn of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), the innovative initiative to assess the environmental and social performance of public and private real estate investments.
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