Construction Enquirer: "Hammerson puts major construction work on hold"

"Hammerson has put a hold on starting construction of any major developments in the UK"

[There's a surprise]

Link to web site

"The developer is focusing on selling more than £500m of property assets to pay down debts while values continue to fall in the UK.

"Hammerson confirmed last summer that it will be delaying the start of a planned £1.4bn extension of the Brent Cross shopping centre where Laing O’Rourke is lined-up as main contractor.

"... Projects now on hold until 2020 at the earliest include Brent Cross, the Whitgift Centre in Croydon, and The Goodsyard in the City of London."

This is Money: "High Street crisis rocks shopping centre giant: Hammerson could be forced into £900m firesale as it plunges to loss and value of its properties slumps"

On the way out?
Link to web site

"Hammerson has plunged into the red following a disastrous year for the firm and its bosses.

"The shopping centre owner, whose retail empire includes the Bull Ring in Birmingham and London's Brent Cross Shopping Centre, swung to a £266.7million loss in 2018 having made a profit of £413.4million in 2017.

"It was hit by a £622million slump in the value of its estate, a 6.2 per cent decline in rental income, and an increase in the number of empty stores at its shopping centres and retail parks."

[Other than that,...]

Barnet Times: "Brent Cross Shopping Centre owner to sell assets to pay debts"

Link to web site

"Shopping centre owner Hammerson, owner of Brent Cross, has reported millions of pounds in losses, and says it will sell off some of its investments to pay off its debt worth over £3 billion.

"In July 2018, the company said it would be selling £1.1 billion of its investments, properties and estates over a two-year period.

"The news has been met with some trepidation as people fear the losses and the selling off of assets may harm Brent Cross or people's jobs."

Hammerson collapse: "Bullring owner targets £900m-plus sell-off as retail crisis bites"

Link to The Guardian

"Hammerson, which owns shopping centres including Birmingham's Bullring and London's Brent Cross, is in talks to sell off more than £900m of property after being hit by the crisis in Britain's retail sector.

"The FTSE 250-listed firm said it was in active discussions to offload more than £900m of assets, far exceeding its £500m target for 2019. Last year it sold off £570m of property, with the average price 7% below the book value in December 2017.

"Hammerson is under pressure from an activist investor, the US hedge fund Elliott Advisors, which owns a 5% stake in the company, to speed up disposals, after a 9.3% decline in its property values in 2018."

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Inside Croydon:
"Hammerson raise more fears for £1.4bn Croydon scheme"

Link to Inside Croydon

"Hammerson, the owners of Centrale, one half of the 'Croydon Partnership' which was supposed to be starting work on the £1.4billion redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre in central Croydon this autumn, has this morning announced that it has put all its major construction projects on hold, and is instead focusing on flogging off more than £500million of property assets to pay down its company debts while the values of its properties continue to fall."

Committee on Standards in Public Life

6.4896 CO CSPL Command Pape... by on Scribd

2019-02-20 Policy & Resources Committee: The Brent Cross Plan - "On a Wing and a Prayer" or "This is Not Going Well"

2019-02-20 Policy & Res... by on Scribd

Inside Croydon: "Barwell, Brexit and Croydon's troubled Westfield/Hammerson dream"

"STEVEN DOWNES on how the meddling of Tory politicians and the Croydon Establishment managed to ensure that the redevelopment of Croydon town centre was never going to run smoothly"

Link to web site

"Questions were asked in the House of Commons recently which saw Croydon, the Westfield/Hammerson centre and Brexit all mentioned in the same breath. Things must be bad.

In one important respect, the gloomy predictions about the outcome of Brexit and Westfield’s dalliance with Croydon town centre have been linked from the start.

"Because both have had considerable input from an Oxbridge-educated public schoolboy, who has never held down a proper job in his life, and landed his latest state-funded position because of who he knows, rather than what he knows."

Decline and Fall of Hammerson: "Fears for mall increase as Hammerson takes a hammering"

"Our retailing correspondent, MT WALLETTE, on how the plunging share price for HAMMERSON, half of the so-called 'Croydon Partnership'. could see the redevelopment of the town centre postponed … permanently"

On the way out? Link to 'Inside Croydon'

"The stock market is becoming increasingly nervous about the valuation of one of the major players in the long-promised regeneration of Croydon town centre, to the extent that there is a growing fear that one half of the “Croydon Partnership” could be forced to pull the plug on the £1.4-billion project.

"Much of the focus on the redevelopment of the increasingly dilapidated Whitgift Centre has so far been on developer Westfield and their plans for the super-mall, which was first revealed in 2012 but is now running at least six years late on its original 2017 completion date.

"However, it is the falling share price of Hammerson, the mall operators who own Centrale and who are the other half of the Croydon Partnership, where the biggest worries for the future of the 'Hammersfield' project now lie.

Inside Croydon: "Crisis for Croydon as [Hammerson and] Westfield 'review' their £1.4bn scheme"

Link to web site

"Hammerson and Westfield today announced a decision to 'review' the £1.4-billion project to redevelop Croydon Town Centre, blaming Brexit and uncertainties over the retail sector.

"In so doing, they immediately claimed 2019's No Shit Sherlock award.

"The scheme to rebuild the ageing Whitgift Centre and link it with Hammerson's Centrale mall on the opposite side of North End in Croydon town centre has been promised by Westfield and Hammerson since 2012."

A second Hammerson scheme collapses: Evening Standard: "Hammerson/Westfield's £1.4bn Croydon development 'under review due to Brexit and structural changes on the high street'"

Link to web site

"The owner of the Westfield shopping centres today said it is 'reviewing' its £1.4 billion new development in Croydon because of Brexit and 'structural changes' on the high street."

"Work on the centre, which is hoped to be the catalyst for broader regeneration, was due to start in September but is now not expected to begin until next year."

"The plans for the scheme, being built jointly by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and property company Hammerson, were approved in November 2017 and got the green light from Sadiq Khan in January last year."

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government: Trying to keep the failing Brent Cross show on the road

2018-12-11 Appendix 3 MHCLG... by on Scribd

The Guardian: "‘The devastation of human life is in view’: what a burning world tells us about climate change"

I was wilfully deluded until I began covering global warming, says David Wallace-Wells. But extreme heat could transform the planet by 2100

Link to web site

"I have never been an environmentalist. I don’t even think of myself as a nature person. I've lived my whole life in cities, enjoying gadgets built by industrial supply chains I hardly think twice about. I've never gone camping, not willingly anyway, and while I always thought it was basically a good idea to keep streams clean and air clear, I also accepted the proposition that there was a trade-off between economic growth and cost to nature – and figured, well, in most cases I'd go for growth. I'm not about to personally slaughter a cow to eat a hamburger, but I'm also not about to go vegan.

"In these ways – many of them, at least – I am like every other American who has spent their life fatally complacent, and wilfully deluded, about climate change, which is not just the biggest threat human life on the planet has ever faced, but a threat of an entirely different category and scale. That is, the scale of human life itself.

"... The majority of the burning [global warming] has come in the last 25 years – since the premiere of Seinfeld. Since the end of the second world war, the figure is about 85%. The story of the industrial world’s kamikaze mission is the story of a single lifetime – the planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe in the years between a baptism or barmitzvah and a funeral."