Chris Gill was named managing director of Kajima Europe's partnerships business in September as part of a succession strategy being put into place at the real asset investor, developer and manager with £10 billion of assets under management.
Having joined the company as projects and investment director in January 2020, Gill's promotion sees him take charge of Kajima Partnerships with a clear goal of accelerating growth across its core sectors of renewables, regeneration and social infrastructure.
Kajima's desire to push further into town centre regeneration projects is exemplified by its recent success in being named by Sutton Council as its preferred development partner, along with Genr8 Developments, for the next phase of works to make over the St Nicholas Shopping Centre, invovling a civic hub, homes and retail and leisure accommodation.
CoStar News spoke with Gill about his plans to build on the success of the firm's former managing directors, Julian Rudd-Jones and Richard Clancy, Kajima's approach to town centre regeneration and his feelings on the UK and investment market and where it is heading.
How are you positioned to take on the role of managing director of the partnerships business?
Gill: The leaders that established the business 25 years ago are retiring or wanting to become more senior advisers to the business, so it was a natural progression for me to move from head of renewables into the managing director position and something that we've been talking about for a while.
But I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now without some really strong leadership that's happened in the past. Julian Rudd-Jones was managing director of the business for over 20 years, which is incredible. You don't see that very often anymore – people running a business for that long – and he did an incredible job.
He's been a fantastic mentor to me coming in and, in the interim period, Richard Clancy as well, who has been running it for two and a half years, both did a great job to give me the foothold to then take the business on. Myself and the rest of the board, including the other internal promotions, we think we've got a really strong foundation to grow the business.
What is your main focus stepping into the managing director role of the partnerships business after five years at Kajima Europe?
Gill: My task is to accelerate our business, that's what I'm aiming to do across our core sectors of renewables, regeneration and social infrastructure. It’s really about growth and acceleration. To date, social infrastructure projects-wise, we've got a total investment value of over £1 billion and four gigawatts of renewable energy projects in development across Europe, and the renewable energy piece has only really happened over the last four and a half years, while social infrastructure has been accretive over time.
I'll be focusing on where we're strong, which is across those core sectors and continuing to expand and enhance the growth of our presence in those sectors over the coming years. That [involves] working with a relatively new board, who are all really committed to the same thing. We have a really strong company that has a really good legacy, which has been established in the social infrastructure space for a long time, and now it's about us taking it on that new wave of growth.
As well as a number of renewable energy projects across the UK and in Europe, the business has a strong focus on regeneration. How does is approach these types of schemes?
Gill: Regeneration for us is a real growth sector. At the moment, we've got three projects in our portfolio with our partners Genr8 Developments [and] the joint venture is called GKRL (Genr8 Kajima Regeneration). But we want to increase that pipeline, we want to do more.
You see all the time new tenders coming out for regeneration schemes across the UK and that's because there are town centres up and down the UK, particularly post-COVID, which require investment and regeneration, and those projects are not easy. They're not easy for the private sector, they're not easy for public sector, but they're projects that are needed for the communities who live and work in those areas.
We've had some real success [in that area]. The first one we did probably ten years ago now was in Rochdale and that project is fantastic and [that town] is really flourishing. It's amazing what [regeneration] can do for these places.
Similarly, if you think about Winchester, you probably wouldn't immediately think that's an area which needs regeneration. But a lot of these town centres have old bus depots and old shopping centres that require regeneration. The thought process [we have] in mind is that we want to keep people there and say, "look, this is a place you can live, you can work, you can thrive".
With Kajima’s investment we want to support that and working with our Genr8 partners as well. I think the early noises coming out for government from our perspective in terms of the sectors in which we operate are very positive. So, I am positive about going into next year.
How has Kajima navigated the difficult investment market of recent years and what are your thoughts on the future state of the market?
Gill: High inflation doesn't help with investor confidence, and therefore it means relatively slow growth. Having said that, we've still managed to do deals, we still managed to transact even through challenging times. But I feel there's more optimism in the market now.
Labour is focusing on economic growth and wealth creation and with this government it feels like there's more of an approach to public-private partnerships and working with the government to remove those barriers to growth and the challenges that we've seen.
That's helpful for the markets in which we operate, because they are looking at the upgrade of the national transmission infrastructure which, from a renewables perspective would be, would be fantastic and again the new towns initiative [is promising]. I am positive about the outlook in the UK.
Kajima has always been a business which has been agile, nimble and it's my job to make sure that we're ready for whatever comes, and we'll look to continue to invest in social infrastructure, in regeneration, in renewable energy, to help drive growth across the nation.
How would you say appetite for public-private partners has changed over the last five years and what do you see happening in the future?
Gill: Within Kajima Partnerships we have 26 projects which are public and private partnership-based and those relationships across the board are fantastic. That takes a lot of hard work from the operational guys on the ground, working with the public sector and managing those projects well.
That is not as easy as it sounds, it's tough, it's hard work, and asset management of projects is tough. Of course, in the news you will see some negative press about private finance initiative[s], but on the whole, our experience on our projects is very positive and that's why we are watching with interest to see what happens in the future with the new government – what role does the public and private partnership have going forward?
There is no doubt that social infrastructure projects are required across the UK, there is capital, certainly Kajima has capital it wishes to deploy into PFI-like projects. We believe we've got some really strong relationships across the public sector, and we want to utilise those to do more projects in the future, whatever they look like.