Hammerson has gone to tender for leasing advisers across its UK and Ireland portfolio as part of its ongoing efficiency drive and its pivot towards city centre destinations, CoStar News can reveal.
The move by the real estate investment trust follows its appointment of JLL as asset manager across its portfolio in 2023 and mirrors similar moves by Landsec and the Crown Estate to consolidate their leasing advisers.
The REIT is understood to be planning to make its decision before the year-end and is seeking strategic partners to reflect its streamlined focus on city centre destinations with major development opportunities attached.
In the UK and Ireland Hammerson has stakes in and asset manages a number of the largest shopping centres.
The largest in the UK are the 914,000-square-foot Brent Cross shopping centre in north west London, which it owns jointly with Standard Life Investments and where Lunson Mitchenall and Cushman & Wakefield are agents. In Birmingham, it has the 1.7 million square foot Bullring estate, which it owns with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and where Cushman & Wakefield and BWD are advisers, and the 500,000-square-foot Grand Central where BWD is agent.
There is also the 1.4 million-square-foot Cabot Circus in Bristol, where JLL and Lunson Mitchenall advise.
Its centres in Ireland are the 1.5 million-square-foot Dundrum Town Centre, which it jointly owns with Allianz Real Estate, The Ironworks, The Ilac Centre and Swords Pavilions, all in Dublin.
Other assets in the UK are Martineau Galleries in Birmingham, The Oracle in Reading, and the Westquay in Southampton. Advisers include Savills, FMX, Bruce Gillingham Pollard and Bannon.
In its latest results Hammerson said it was reaping the rewards of repurposing its assets into a core portfolio of city centre mixed-use destinations while completing a £500 million disposal programme.
That programme has seen it sell out-of-town retail assets as well as mall interests in Leeds, Leicester and Aberdeen.
In full-year results for the period to end of 31 December 2023, the group said it had seen another record year of leasing, cut costs and strengthened its balance sheet, with its assets in "high demand".
In 2023 it changed its business model, choosing what it terms "partners of scale" as suppliers in the UK and France as part of a three-year efficiency drive. It was responding to a sinking share price as retail was hit by the impact of online shopping and the pandemic.
Major retail landlords have consolidated agencies on individual assets into a smaller number working across entire portfolios, though it is unclear if this is Hammerson's plan.
The Crown Estate employed a number of the UK's leading retail agents across London, including CBRE, JLL, Colliers and Nash Bond before appointing Cushman & Wakefield, Colliers International and KLM Real Estate as its advisers across its portfolio in 2022.
In May 2022 Landsec appointed a new leasing agent panel, to work across its retail and hospitality portfolio, reducing the number of advisers from 31 to five. The selected parties were: CBRE, Bruce Gillingham Pollard, Colliers, Curson Sowerby Partners and Time Retail Partners. CBRE works across the entire portfolio.