CBRE Investors

I work for the part of CBRE Investors called Strategic Partners, which is a series of value-add funds.We’re very hands-on and management intensive, so we need to work closely with our professional advisers to maximise the return to our investors.

Nabarro is the appointed lawyer for Strategic Partners for day-to-day management-related legal issues. The management is dealt with out of their Sheffield office on the basis that the rates should be a little bit lower than they are in London.

Strategic Partners UK has grown dramatically in the time that we have been working together. The SPUK II fund was about £500m gross asset value and SPUK III is anticipated to be about £1.2bn in value. Nabarro’s workload has snowballed and they have anticipated and planned for that growth accordingly. It’s been largely seamless.

Nabarro understand our motivations. They know what we are seeking to achieve, which is down to good communication between us.

As an example, we had an issue with the signing of a new lease on an industrial estate - the tenant was not responding. Nabarro were engaged to advise on how we could spur the tenant into action. They set out two or three possible courses of action for us, with the pros and cons of each, and made a recommendation, rather than just sitting on the fence and saying: it’s up to you guys. That’s what I liked about it. Plenty of people will tell you what the options are: few are brave enough to say: having considered it, we think you should do this.

We went with Nabarro’s advice and we achieved our objective. It was a big judgement call, because there were a lot of risks associated with the situation.

Nobody wants to go to court - it’s far better that landlord and tenant agree by negotiation. It’s a reflection on the team that we’ve never ended up in court. You might think cynically that it’s in Nabarro's interest for things to go to court, because that’s when the costs start racking up! But in terms of longterm relationships, it’s not. If they can keep us out of court then we are likely to keep using them!

I’ve worked with most of the big property law firms. They all have good knowledge and skills. Ultimately it’s about people and relationships. It’s about who you know and who you trust and the way that they put information across to you.

Putting clarity matters into practice is a great idea, because that’s what clients want at the end of the day. They want somebody to tell them what the options are, make a recommendation and let them know the consequences of following that recommendation - and in a way that’s not unnecessarily technical and complicated.

It’s a commercial view.We’re all busy people, and Nabarro is too.We don’t want to get sidetracked by pages and pages of legalese, when they can just cut to the chase and tell us what we need to be doing.