#197 City grandee Gerald Kaye looks back at his career as he retires as CEO from Helical

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Hosts: Andrew Teacher

Andrew Teacher talks to the outgoing CEO of Helical, Gerald Kaye, on a life spent in property, the challenges facing the London real estate market, and what he plans to do post-Helical.

Gerald Kaye has devoted his life to the real estate sector. In March of this year, Gerald Kaye celebrated 30 years with Helical, but he admits that he had not imagined at the start of his career becoming one of real estate’s leading authorities on offices. Kaye says his early choice of career was instead influenced by familial ties in land agency and a childhood connection to the countryside. Kaye envisaged being the custodian of a country estate: “I went to Reading University to study Estate Management but I realised soon into the course that I wasn’t going to make much money as a land agent.” Hence, Kaye took a specialism in commercial property and then cut his teeth as a graduate surveyor with Knight Frank and Rutley which remains, for Kaye: “one of the top firms.” Kaye specialised in the office market outside of Central London. It was early work with property developers Peter and John Beckwith via Second London Wall that sparked Kaye’s interest in commercial development. Kaye says: “They would always react when you contacted them and look at a site you recommended.” Kaye enjoyed working with them so much so that he gave notice at Knight Frank and joined London & Edinburgh Trust, the newly rechristened Second London Wall, shortly then to IPO. Looking back, Kaye reflects that he was given remarkable independence and latitude to act from inception to completion on projects from the start: “it really was a case of going in at the deep end and after about a week I had to start to swim or sink.” The 1980s represented a fascinating time for Kaye to be involved in real estate amid the Big Bang and deregulatory agenda under Thatcher, which caused a strong demand for new offices for merged investment banks, and the advent of large-scale development projects such as Broadgate and Canary Wharf. Kaye considers Canary Wharf fulfilled a useful function at the time by providing: “the very large offices for the mega investment banks who wanted a base in Europe and who could get the space they wanted at Canary Wharf without planning constraints.” For Kaye, the trade-off was that while City rents did not rise as fast as they might have done, Canary Wharf was additive and well-timed to cementing London’s role as a financial centre. Changes in planning rules under Peter Wynne Rees as Chief Planning Officer in the late 1980s expanded the amount of space that could be built on sites in the City of London. As Kaye puts it: “Until that point, you could only build five times the amount of space on the site.” From that point on, Kaye considers, the quality of architecture improved as architects and developers were given greater freedom. Kaye saw an expanded remit with London and Edinburgh Trust after it was taken over by a Swedish pension trust in April 1990. Kaye assumed the reins as CEO of a new head office in Brussels in March 1992, overseeing developments across France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. After 18 months he had begun to feel the need for a change. It was an introduction to Mike Slade in 1994 that led to Kaye’s beginnings with Helical. Kaye was brought into Helical with a brief to, “do more development”. The timing was auspicious, since the beginnings...