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The Duke of Westminster’s property company has reported a surge in profits thanks to fast-rising rents in its vast portfolio of offices, flats and shops in London’s high-end Mayfair and Belgravia neighbourhoods.
Grosvenor, which owns £8.2bn of property, said its underlying profit rose 16.5 per cent to £86.4mn last year.
The sprawling group controlled by the Grosvenor family, who started developing Mayfair more than 300 years ago, is the largest of several surviving aristocratic estates that own swaths of central London. Its property holdings make Hugh Grosvenor, the current Duke, one of the UK’s richest people.
The group also announced a leadership shake-up. Chief executive Mark Preston will stand down in September after 17 years, handing the role to James Raynor — currently head of the UK property division.
Chief financial officer Rob Davis will retire and be replaced by Debbie Lee, who is finance chief of the UK division.
Preston will remain as “executive trustee”, a post he has held since 2017. He said the role entailed serving as “adviser to the Grosvenor family, especially to the Duke, on really all matters”.
As chief executive, he has driven efforts to diversify the group beyond its core assets in London, launching an international investment division and stepping up Grosvenor’s dealmaking to fund new investments.
The group in January sold a £306mn stake in part of the Mayfair estate to the Norwegian oil fund in a joint venture deal. It also sold its stake in the Liverpool One shopping centre, which it developed, to Land Securities late last year.
In its annual results, Grosvenor reported that its occupancy rates increased to 97 per cent, having steadily recovered from lows around 90 per cent after the pandemic — which helped drive higher earnings.
Davis said the increase in profits was “driven by a combination of strong rental growth, particularly in the UK, high occupancy . . . and tight control on our overhead.”
Its portfolio is nearly 40 per cent offices, with a quarter in residential and 20 per cent in retail.
“Against a challenging year for the global economy, marked by mediocre growth and rising geopolitical tensions, our business has delivered a strong set of financial results,” said Preston.
He added that the group wanted to accelerate its spending on a multibillion pound pipeline of new developments and investments. “Finding ways to release capital to enable us to invest is what this is all about,” he said. “Historically we would just be sequential about it. That is a perfectly legitimate approach. But naturally one wants to do more of it sooner.”
Its projects include an overhaul of Grosvenor Square and a £500mn redevelopment centred around South Molton Street, near Bond Street station, in partnership with Mitsui Fudosan.
