Rackind is a persuasive individual and the project duly got the green light. It was carried out with tenants in situ without a single legal claim for disturbance and has resulted in the creation of 13,000 sq ft more net lettable space and a whopping 50% increase in the estimated rental value.
“When you walk in now you just turn around and go wow! You experience a real sense of arrival, it’s like a tardis you could never imagine from the outside what’s on the inside.
“What we have tried to create is something that is contemporary and cool, conceived for the new way that businesses utilise their space today whilst optimising the attraction to the global corporate occupier who wants to be associated with Trafalgar Square for their corporate identity.”
Wainbridge is something of an exception in the real estate world as it defies easy characterisation with a hybrid of capabilities.
“We are an institutional investment management platform that uses real estate skills to deploy funds throughout the capital stack. Either as a discretionary investment manager, a developer, as JV partner, as operating partner or as a pure asset manager. Because we have unique capabilities to thoroughly understand a property whilst “custom tailoring” financing solutions our underwriting is very financial, structured and above all very detailed, we believe it’s second to none.”
The son of Peter Rackind a leading real estate figure in the North West who ran Manchester’s leading independent agency, the Elliott Partnership, Rackind Junior got hooked on property at a relatively tender age.
“When I was doing my A-Levels in 1988-89, the property industry was booming so after school I would go into my father’s office and see all these young guys with great cars, opening bottles of champagne every day celebrating yet another completed deal. So I went to university thinking that property was an easy way to make money. Unfortunately I was badly disappointed, when I graduated in 1993 right into the middle of a major recession!”
After getting a start at Michael Elliott and Partners in London, he moved on to Baltic Property Finance and specialised in mezzanine and equity investing – a comparatively exotic product in those days.
“At Baltic I learnt very quickly to look throughout the capital stack and price risk and reward. It wasn’t always best to participate in the equity, it wasn’t always best to participate in the mezzanine debt, it wasn’t always best to be in the senior, we normally invested as a mixture of mezzanine and equity.”
By 1998, he had moved to Paris to work for Howard Ronson and quickly became involved with a major office tower development in La Defense: “I was working 20-hour days, six days a week but truly learnt the concept of the work
ethos linked with attention to detail and above all loyalty to your professional team of consultants and advisors”.
From there he moved to Hines and eventually back to London where he was headhunted by Cambridge Place Investment Management to lead the European asset management of the 2.5 million sq ft pan-European Crownstone office portfolio. As an asset-backed securities hedge fund, Cambridge was a victim of the 2008 financial crash. Declining a job offer to relocate to Qatar, Rackind reconnected with his erstwhile Hines colleague, Ed Fernandez, a meeting which led to the creation of Wainbridge.
The duo joined forces, secured investment funding from international High Net Worth investors – and started to build a platform.
“It was always our intention to be a best in class investment manager, managing both private and institutional capital. With an institutional capital raise always in our mind we went out and recruited leading figures in the industry, Graham Langlay- Smith from Credit Suisse, Jonathan Hardie from Westbrook, and Jay Patel from Euro Hypo. Seth Lieberman joined us on the advisory board along with Robert Orr, former CEO of JLL EMEA.
“Our first fund with £70m of discretionary equity closed in September 2010 and the team went on to complete nine acquisitions of which seven were JVs.”
Floorplates have been expanded by a partial infilling of the atrium, which in turn has been given a
new, cool, sleek contemporary look. There is not a tile of pink marble or a koi carp in sight, and the building has a new name – One Strand.
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