British Land
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| The British Land Company Plc | |
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| Type of Company | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1959 |
| Headquarters | Regent's Park, London |
| Key people | Sir John Ritblat (Chairman) Stephen Hester (CEO) |
| Industry | property |
| Products | central london real estate, retail warehouses, superstores, out-of-town shopping centres |
| Revenue | £0.486 billion GBP (2004) |
| Employees | 715 ( 31/03/2005) |
| Website | www.britishland.com |
The British Land Company Plc (LSE: BLND) is one of the largest property development and investment companies in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in London and traded on the London Stock Exchange. It is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
British Land was founded in 1856. Since 1970 it has been chaired by Sir John Ritblat, one of the best known figures in the British property sector, whose knighthood was announced in the queen's new year's honours list for 2006. In that year the portfolio was valued at £28 million. As of 30 September 2004 the investment portfolio was valued at over £11 billion and net assets were over £5 billion. Over 99% of assets by value were located in the UK, and the remainder in the Republic of Ireland. It made a profit after tax of £171.5 million for the year ended 31 March 2004.
More than half of the portfolio is invested in retail. This includes the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield, which is one of the largest in the UK, and a large amount of property which has been purchased from and leased back to major retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and ASDA. The other major group of assets is office property, most of which is in central London. This includes the Broadgate Estate near Liverpool Street station and Regent's Place near Euston Station. British Land has been involved in Broadgate, which is one of the largest development projects in London in recent decades and is still incomplete, since 1984, and after making a string of acquisitions on the estate over the years it acquired the last piece in 2003. In 2004 it received planning permission for a Richard Rogers designed skyscraper at 122 Leadenhall Street in the City of London which will become one of the tallest buildings in Western Europe if and when it is built. The company have current proposals to extend Regent's Place as far as Osnaburgh Street on the edge of Regents Park with two new mixed use buildings designed by Terry Farrell and Wilkinson Eyre.
In May 2005 British Land announced that it had agreed to purchase Pillar Property Plc for £811 million pounds in cash to boost its position in the out-of-town retail property sector.
