What are the implications of globalisation for the IQL?

Over the last decade, there’s been a real explosion in urbanisation. Globally, there’s a movement of people concentrating the places where they want to live around big cities. And what that’s meant is a lot of major urban regenerations. Removing what was there, which might be dilapidated, which might be old, which might be underutilised, or might be ready for change. Lendlease is an organisation that’s shifted its whole corporate strategy to get in behind urban regeneration. And some of the opportunities that we have as a business, in Singapore, in KL, in Boston, and New York, in Chicago, in Sydney, in Brisbane, in Perth, in London, in Milan, in Rome– are off the back of that.

So, from a global perspective, you have a lot of international organisations going into cities to do big, complicated projects, to deliver great outcomes for local communities. They bring with them global capital. You can’t develop without capital partners. You can’t develop without creating a product that is of some value, unless it’s being owned and taken out by the public sector, that the private sector want to invest in it. So you’ve got to have an investable product. You’ve got to have a product that capital wants to follow. So capital is becoming more mobile. We deal with capital partners who are investing in the Middle East, in Australia, here in London. They are global. So those relationships, those networks are becoming more homogeneous.

When it comes to selling products, you’ve got a market to institutional investors who might be based here in London, or might be based abroad. Very different messages for very different audiences who want to hear different things. But there’s a consistent theme in terms of the quality of the product, the location, and the strength of the location. Some of those points I raised earlier about the robustness of the infrastructure, the robustness of transport connections, the fundamentals that drive value. And some of those things are very, very consistent. But marketing a project of this scale into those different audiences is incredibly important, multifaceted, and, depending on which audience you’re talking to, will be tailored to suit.

As the world globalises, as the industry becomes smaller, the opportunity to travel, the opportunity to work on very cool projects in very cool parts of the world doing great things, is increasing. That opportunity will continue to grow.