Thirty-two years from the council's front counter to the chief executive's office

Mandate

Reduce the group's dependence on CBD office after the pandemic, bring gearing back inside the board's range and turn logistics and rental housing into durable sources of income.

Outcomes

• Sold four office towers for A$1.46bn between 2023 and 2025; office fell from 54% to 32% of balance-sheet property.
• Reduced gearing from 36.1% at December 2022 to 29.8% at June 2026, inside the 25–35% range.
• Commissioned off-cycle independent valuations of all eleven office towers in December 2022 and introduced tower-by-tower disclosure of incentives and net effective rents.
• Moved housing towers to two-stage contracts; the 410-home Parramatta tower finished 1.9% above its stage-two price.
• Grew the build-to-rent platform to 722 operating homes, with 1,174 more under construction or in design.

Decisions in context

The board appointed me after an internal and external search, with a clear brief: office was 54% of our balance sheet, Melbourne occupancy had not recovered from the lockdowns and the group needed a different shape. Rates began rising ten months later, which turned a strategic question into an urgent one. I brought forward independent valuations of the whole office portfolio, persuaded the board to sell four towers and reset the distribution, and used the proceeds to restore gearing and fund logistics and rental housing. I also changed how we contract builders for housing towers and how we approach planning authorities. I chair the executive committee and the hold-sell review, attend the investment and audit and risk committees by invitation, and manage our two pension partners and our largest securityholders personally. Not every decision has been right; the Brisbane sale and the timing of the distribution reset are the two I would revisit first.

Reason for the move

Current appointment.

Mandate

Run capital allocation, transactions and development, and find a growth sector beyond office and retail.

Outcomes

• Proposed the build-to-rent strategy in 2019 and formed the Corvalla Living Partnership with Skarholt Pension Fund as equal partner.
• Started construction of 312 rental homes in Moonee Ponds in 2020; the building opened in 2022.
• Sold A$640m of non-core retail centres between 2018 and 2020.
• Delivered 142,000 square metres of logistics development at an average 6.9% yield on cost.
• Acquired the Footscray build-to-rent site for A$41m in early 2021.

Decisions in context

As chief investment officer I owned every paper that asked the board to buy, sell or build. I learnt to write them for directors who had not walked the site: the recommendation first, the downside case beside it and the asset manager's objections attached rather than summarised. The most consequential proposal was build-to-rent. In 2019 it was a young asset class in Australia, with thin operating data and uncertain tax treatment, and two directors thought it a distraction. I argued that our logistics partnership with Skarholt had shown how to share development risk with patient capital, and that rental housing near transport would be needed whatever the office market did. We started in Moonee Ponds with 312 homes. I also sold retail centres that no longer fitted and kept the logistics pipeline moving. The pandemic arrived in my third year and made clear that our office exposure, which I had not challenged hard enough, was the group's largest unaddressed risk.

Reason for the move

Appointed managing director and chief executive by the board.

Mandate

Build a logistics business and a third-party funds platform inside a group known for office and retail.

Outcomes

• Grew the logistics portfolio from A$0.4bn to A$1.6bn in four years.
• Formed the Corvalla Logistics Partnership with Skarholt Pension Fund in 2015, with an A$1.2bn commitment.
• Bought 96 hectares of industrial land in Melbourne's west and Sydney's south-west for staged development.
• Kept logistics occupancy above 97% throughout.

Decisions in context

Corvalla hired me to build something it did not have. In 2013 the group owned A$0.4 billion of warehouses, bought opportunistically, and no development capability in logistics. I recruited a small team from the unlisted market, bought land in the two corridors where distribution demand was strongest and began developing pre-leased warehouses for retailers and third-party logistics operators. The hardest part was internal. A group whose culture had been formed by office towers and shopping centres had to accept smaller buildings, shorter design periods and tenants who negotiated on rent per square metre to the cent. Bringing in Skarholt as a partner in 2015 gave us patient capital and a second set of eyes on every investment, and taught me how to report to a partner who could walk away at the next commitment period. By 2017 logistics was a fifth of the group, and the board asked me to take on capital allocation across the whole portfolio.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief investment officer.

Mandate

Run the development programme, then the main fund through the credit squeeze and its recovery.

Outcomes

• Sold nine estates, about a fifth of the fund, in 2009 and led a pro-rata equity raising of A$180m from existing investors.
• Reduced fund gearing from 44% to 31% by 2010, against a 50% lending covenant.
• Completed every development under construction in 2008 without a default.
• Resumed acquisitions in 2011; funds under management reached A$2.6bn by 2012.

Decisions in context

I moved to Sydney to work on income-producing property and to learn how institutional investors think. For three years I ran Tannock's development programme, building warehouses on pre-lease for retailers and freight operators. In 2009 the founders asked me to take over the main fund, just as credit markets closed. Gearing was 44% against a covenant of 50%, two banks were cutting their property books and several investors wanted their money back. I recommended selling nine estates at prices well below recent valuations and asking investors for new equity in proportion to their holdings, with full disclosure of what we were selling and why. It was the most unpopular recommendation I had made, and one investor stayed out of the next fund. The fund kept its lenders, finished every building it had started and was buying again in 2011. That episode formed the habit I took to Corvalla: act on the value you believe, not the one you would prefer.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Corvalla to build a logistics business, which also brought me home to Melbourne.

Mandate

Take estates from approval to settlement and improve the company's record with councils and servicing agencies.

Outcomes

• Delivered four estates totalling about 6,800 lots.
• Cut average time from application to first-stage approval from 19 months to 11 by meeting councils and agencies before lodging.
• Negotiated a shared drainage scheme with two neighbouring landowners and the water authority.
• Introduced lot-by-lot feasibility updates for the family's monthly board.

Decisions in context

I joined Yarrendale to see planning from the applicant's side, and the first year was humbling. I knew how a council reads an application but not how a developer pays for the months it takes. Yarrendale's family owners were exacting about cash: every stage of every estate had a feasibility, and every delay had a holding cost someone had to explain at the monthly board. I made it my business to meet council officers, water authorities and road agencies before we lodged anything, and to settle their concerns while the design could still change cheaply. Approval times fell by about eight months on average. I also negotiated a shared drainage scheme with two neighbouring landowners, the kind of agreement I had watched take twenty-six months from the council side. Promoted to general manager in 2003, I ran four estates. By 2006 I wanted to work on long-term income assets, and the family's own succession plans left little room to grow.

Reason for the move

Moved to income-producing property and funds management in Sydney.

Mandate

Prepare outline plans and development contributions for the municipality's growth areas.

Outcomes

• Prepared outline development plans for three growth precincts covering about 14,000 future homes.
• Drafted the council's first development contributions plan for community facilities.
• Reduced the backlog of growth-area applications from 64 to 21 by 1999.

Decisions in context

I joined Kallanbrook straight from university, at a time when Melbourne's western fringe was growing faster than the council's staff. My first years were spent drafting outline plans for former grazing land: where the roads, drains, schools and parks would go, and who would pay for them. From 1997 I coordinated six planners and a backlog of growth-area applications that had reached 64. We reduced it to 21 by changing the order of work, settling the infrastructure questions before the detailed assessments. I also watched one estate wait twenty-six months for a drainage agreement between three public and private parties, none of whom was at fault and none of whom owned the total delay. Writing reports and refusals for councillors taught me to state reasons precisely, because an applicant would read them closely. Those five years gave me a planner's way of reading a site, which I still use, and a lasting interest in what delay costs.

Reason for the move

Joined a developer to see the approval process from the applicant's side.