Company History

The company in its present form was created by the reverse takeover in April 1986 by Redman Heenan International plc of Clarke St Modwen Properties Ltd.

Redman Heenan, formerly a capital goods engineering group, had become a property shell as a result of drastic restructuring following the manufacturing recession of the early 1980's. Clarke St Modwen, part of Clarke Securities, a private house-building and construction group was a commercial property development company formed in 1966 by Stan Clarke and his brother-in-law Jim Leavesley.

Following the takeover the company changed its name to St Modwen Properties PLC and Stan Clarke became its Chairman with Anthony Glossop, formerly Chief Executive of Redman Heenan, as its Managing Director. St Modwen then comprised a small but experienced development team, operating through a network of regional offices with a tradition of working in partnership with landowners and local authorities, and a useful rental income arising from the rump of Redman Heenan and two property investment companies owned by Stan Clarke and Jim Leavesley which had been included in the take-over. It had net assets of 10p per share and in its first financial period achieved pre-tax profits of just over £1million.

Its declared strategy which it has pursued continuously since then was to balance a growing rent roll from the active management of secondary properties with a strong imaginative development programme.

In the late 1980's St. Modwen grew rapidly on the back of a substantial development programme. This was based initially on enterprise zone and industrial schemes, but moved on to include retail schemes such as retail parks at the Meteor Centre, Derby and Festival Park, Stoke-on-Trent and supermarket developments at Lichfield, Burton-upon-Trent and Stoke-on-Trent. Office parks followed with the first in 1989 being the highly successful Concorde Business Park, near Manchester Airport where over 21,000 sq.m. was let to B.T. and Ferranti.

Festival Park developed on the site of the 1986 National Garden Festival, was something of a watershed for the company, being its first really substantial mixed use scheme on a significant former brownfield site. Acquired in 1988 and with three subsequent expansions it now covers over 310 acres and provides industrial, office, retail, leisure and residential accommodation as well as a major area of public open space.

This phase of the company's existence saw pre-tax profits increase from £1million in 1986 to over £10million in 1989, but a change in emphasis was brought about by the national property collapse in 1990/1991. Whilst the company, unlike most of its direct competitors, remained profitable throughout and never ceased its development activity this was inevitably on a lesser scale. Attention was therefore switched to working on increasing the company's rental income.

This period saw the establishment of St. Modwen's regeneration strategy, which is covered in a separate section.

It also saw a major expansion of St. Modwen's range of partnerships with landowners and local authorities. These had always been an important element of St. Modwen's work - Festival Park was developed in association with the City of Stoke-on-Trent and Concorde Business Park was developed in association with the City of Manchester, but the 1990's saw many more such associations. British Coal, British Steel, MoD, Cranfield University, are just some of the landowners with whom St. Modwen established joint ventures. The company also formed joint companies with four local authorities and joint ventures with many more; anticipating by many years the current vogue for private/public sector partnerships. In addition in 1998 St. Modwen entered into a significant joint venture with Salhia Real Estate Co of Kuwait to establish an investment partnership which now holds schemes with a gross end value well in excess of £1 billion.

As the property market recovered in the mid 1990's the balance of the company's activities swung once more towards development, although the balance remained more even than in the development led 1980's. Significant projects included Cannock Shopping Centre, Springfield Retail Park (Stoke-on-Trent), Oldbury Retail Park, Orbital Retail Park (Cannock) and EGG's Call Centre at Pride Park, Derby.

All this effort was not unrewarded and St. Modwen grew substantially throughout the decade so that by its end net assets per share were just over £1, a ten-fold increase on its original net assets and pre-tax profits had reached £18.5 million.

It had also built a development team, still structured on a regional office basis, the equal of any in the industry, with a reputation for delivering excellent property solutions on even the most challenging sites.

The current decade has seen a continuation of that trend, with the company now established firmly as one of the country’s leading regeneration specialists, focussing on town centre regeneration, partnering industry, brownfield renewal and restoring heritage.

New regional offices have been opened in Leeds and Bristol, and the existing offices in Birmingham, London, Stoke and Warrington expanded. In addition the company has built up a construction management department which gives it an edge in cost competitiveness and quality over many of its competitors.

Significant acquisitions in this period have included major portfolios from Alstom and Marconi, and large industrial sites such as Llanwern and Longbridge. The company has also been selected by many local authorities for substantial town centre regeneration schemes such as Bedford, Bognor, Hatfield, Liverpool, Newham and Skelmersdale.

A particularly important acquisition was the MoDEL project, under which, in partnership with Vinci PLC, the company is providing substantial facilities for the MoD at RAF Northolt, obtaining reimbursement through the development of six major London MoD sites which will in addition give a significant financial return to the MoD.

Two trends that have emerged are the company’s being a major supplier of oven-ready land to the house building industry and a developer of significant town centre mixed use schemes such as Edmonton, Farnborough, and Wembley (all of which are currently under construction).

The rationalisation of its activity into the concept of a hopper of opportunities marshalled through the planning, land assembly and site remediation process, leading to an eventual continuous development programme has given the company a clarity of purpose which is not commonly found in the property industry.

These have reflected in the results which in the financial year ended 30th November 2006 showed net assets per share of 323p (£389m) and pre tax profits (including revaluation surplus) of £97m.

The company has not been slow to embrace modern agendas relating to corporate, social and environmental responsibility. It’s business as a regeneration specialist makes it particularly well-suited to delivering real benefits in these areas, rather than merely to comply with codes of best reporting practice.