Stephen is Head of Commercial and leads the UK commercial business, including brokerage, consultancy and professional, with a focus on driving growth.
Having joined Strutt & Parker over 30 years ago, he has experience in virtually all disciplines across the traditional sectors and assets as diverse as TV studios, military establishments and advertising media.
Many of the businesses he currently works with have been clients for 25 years or more, Arup being an example. Stephen started doing small pieces of work for the architecture and engineering practice in London in the early 1990s and that work grew to eventually providing multiple services on their property assets across the country.
A highlight was advising on the simultaneous freehold acquisition of 8 Fitzroy Street (150,000 sq ft) for £197m, the sale & leaseback of 13 Fitzroy Street (90,000 sq ft) and the pre-let of 150,000 sq ft in Derwent London’s 80 Charlotte Street.
Early in his career, Stephen was seconded to a FTSE 100 company for three months, but that initial contract became five years. As Group Property Director, he was responsible for over 500 locations globally.
In addition to overseeing the strategic asset management of the estate, he led on the real estate aspects of a number of high-profile mergers and acquisitions exceeding £3bn. These included the sale of the TV companies Anglia, HTV and Meridian to what became ITV and the sale of Express Newspapers.
Creating opportunities for others and helping people succeed is important to Stephen, and he’s a firm believer in succession planning. He was involved in the Social Mobility Foundation when it was first founded.
