This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming the European Real Estate Association (EPRA) to our home city of Berlin for its annual conference.

As headline sponsor, Sirius Real Estate was centre stage across all three days of the conference, and I’d like to start this update by thanking our team for all of their hard work both in the lead-up, and during the course of, the event. There is always an added pressure when you’re on “home turf” and I’m pleased we were able to showcase the very best of our business to so many in our industry.

On Tuesday, we welcomed a number of guests to Sirius Group Services – our head office in Potsdamer Platz, with the opportunity to meet many of our team and hear more about the power of our platform. In the afternoon, around 30 attendees toured two of our sites located in the northwest of the capital.

The first stop was Gartenfeld – our first ever site, acquired in February 2006. Located in the district of Spandau – historically the city’s industrial home – Gartenfeld business park offers the full range of different workspaces from offices, to storage, to conference rooms, to large-scale production spaces. Built between the 1930s and 1970s the site’s eight existing buildings encompass over 25,000 sqm of space – though with construction underway this will expand to over 35,000 sqm by 2027. There is so much to say about Gartenfeld – about both our transformation of the site and about its future – that I could write a whole article on it.

Nevertheless, we were quickly on the move again to our Borsigwerke business park, a historic production site for steam locomotives and now a property in our JV portfolio. Bought in 2008, Borsigwerke is a large site of just over 79,000 sqm with a plan to expand this by a further 5,000 sqm by 2027. The site is another good example of the breadth of our mixed-use sites – with office, storage and industrial production spaces all on site. Tenants range from small businesses to large global businesses requiring production facilities. One of the key features of this site is a harbour, offering the ability to transport heavy goods from the site directly to the Tegeler See for transportation by river onto Hamburg and the North Sea ports.

The topic for discussion on Wednesday was a Brave New World and I was delighted to join a panel discussion following the key notes, alongside Hammerson CEO, Rita-Rose Gagné, and Rolf Buch, CEO of Vonovia. We covered a lot of ground, and I thought it worthwhile reflecting on a few of the discussion areas.

We began the session by answering the question as to whether we were optimistic or pessimistic about the prospects for European real estate. Ultimately, I’m an optimist though my response this week was the same as it always is – as leaders within our industry we have to define our own destiny. If we look ahead to 2050, we don’t know what we don’t know about the technologies that will transform our industry, businesses and lives in the years to come. This makes it hard for us to properly plan in detail for the future beyond the next five years, but its incumbent on us all to be focused on the changes we can make now to ensure that we’re ready to embrace those technological transformations in the years to come. The shorter answer is that I am optimist about how technology – in all its guises – will help us meet the big challenges facing our sector in the years ahead.

We were also asked what was in our inboxes today that wasn’t a few years ago. For me, the most critical challenge is around people and talent. Post-pandemic, the employer-employee relationship has changed: workers are empowered to work from home, and employee engagement has stagnated. This means that while many employees are present, they are quitely quitting. Indeed, Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce 2024 report states that only 10% of employees in the UK, and 15% in Germany are engaged. I believe strongly that this isn’t beneficial to either party, particularly as that report also highlights that people’s mental wellbeing has been worsening. At Sirius, we are squarely focused on our people, knowing that ultimately they are the key to our success.

As leaders of businesses with significant operations in Germany, Rolf and I were also asked about the current economic and political situation in the country. On economics, ultimately Sirius has maintained like-for-like rental growth of more than 5% for the past ten years and as a byproduct of our business model, we don’t see the lowering of GDP as a threat to that continuing into the future. On politics, my message to the attendees was that there is clearly frustration amongst many voters with the current government – and that’s been apparent in recent state election results. However, come the federal election in 2025, at this point in time it’s likely that this will result in a pro-business CDU-led coalition government. 

On Thursday, the EPRA Investors’ Day gave us a welcome opportunity to drill down into many these topics in more detail. It’s always a pleasure to discuss the fundamentals of our business and sector with investors face to face.

Thank you to EPRA for choosing to visit Berlin again, and congratulations on hosting an excellent conference.