24 March 2016
Also in Cannes
Shaw Sheet reports from MIPIM
by J.R.Thomas
March on the French Riviera; spring abounding on the Mediterranean. What could be more agreeable after the grey gloom of a British winter? To be sure, the weather is not always totally reliable; sudden spring storms can sweep in and bend the palm trees at painful angles, sometimes even dusting them with snow, of the twelve hour variety. But generally March in Cannes, sunshine on the Croisette, is just the tonic for the pale and jaded Brit. And especially the pale and jaded British estate agent. So much that around 27,000 of them go to Cannes about this time to refresh their fevered souls and feast their tired eyes on the sparkling blue of the Med.
We exaggerate. Not all 27,000 are British, and by no means all are estate agents. The agency brew is leavened with bankers, lawyers, local and national government employees, quantity surveyors, construction company bosses, and even the odd property investor. It is not coincidence that they all find their way to Cannes at this point of the spring, like Snow Geese heading for kinder climes. Far from it. The migration south is meticulously organised and coordinated months, if not years, ahead. By Tuesday morning the migrating property types have made their arduous business-class journey to the sun and are landing in their temporary Riviera roosts; soon the massed pinstriped flocks are sauntering through the streets and into the early cocktail parties. “How did you get here?”, How long are you staying?”. At this stage the cackle is fresh and lively; by Thursday it will be jaded and longing for home, but at this point every possibility of deals and commissions lies ahead, even for those who know this is just where introductions are made and that the deals, as always, are tested and consummated back at home, in bland meeting rooms and in lawyers offices.
For this is MIPIM, the annual jamboree of the property industry, when the great and the good, and those with things to sell to them, all get together for a series of seminars on serious matters which will affect the future of property investment and development. No, really; there is an extensive number of such learned events. And it is usually easy to get into them – most people, unless the wind is blowing off the Med with an unpleasant ferocity, are networking in the bars and restaurants, and in the private villa’s in the hills behind town, hired at huge rents for the week.
It is said that this is the biggest spending week in the whole of Cannes’s many and varied hostings of trade events, a business in which it is one of the powerful venues in Europe. The only challenger in the spending stakes is the Film Festival, some say the Porn Film Festival, which is usually the week after MIPIM and may be bigger still. Certainly, in MIPIM week it is impossible to get a bed in town, even in a broom cupboard, and if you want to eat in a decent restaurant you had better have booked up well in advance – or be prepared to eat at very strange times. Even yacht owners battle to get berths in the inner harbour – though there is a considerable cachet in mooring in the outer harbour – “my yacht is MUCH too big to bring into the inner harbour”. Most telling of all, perhaps, is the late night scene in the Martinez Hotel, in summer the traditional redoubt of French dowagers and the more discreet type of Russian billionaire, but in MIPIM week the favoured late night haunt of the British contingent. By midnight the bars are so packed that only bottled beer is served, at eye watering prices naturally; box of bottles are carried to the bars over the heads of the yelling property types and redistributed in clutches of opened bottles to any hand that can pass enough euros to the wilting bar staff.
In the property world, those who are there believe that nobody is anybody unless they are at MIPIM. Those left back in the UK offices believe that nobody who is actually doing anything important will spend any time or money in going to MIPIM. But on the Croisette, they laugh at such suggestions; the world is here; the networking is ferocious; the camaraderie flows in tune with the wine.
Alas, this year, not for long. On Tuesday it rained, heavily. The delegates fled to the wine bars and watched the leaden skies. Their mood was further chastened by the organisers of MIPIM releasing the official delegate figures. The shame, the shame; the English delegates, for the first time ever, were outnumbered by the French. As this is France, though you might not think so from the accents overheard in town this week, it is perhaps not that surprising that the home team should be the largest contingent. But it is seen as a slur on the British property industry, a body blow to national prestige that might rank with not winning the Rugby Grand Slam or a Test Series against the Aussies. The Brits outnumbered at MIPIM? Can this be so? Even the Estates Gazette, the Bible, Times, and Debrett’s of the UK property industry combined into one thick weekly magazine, expressed its disappointment that things should have come to this, and urged the UK property industry to try harder next year. (This may not be entirely disconnected from the fact that the owners of the Estates Gazette also run MIPIM…)
On Wednesday, things got worse. Forecasts for the UK property market released that day suggested that turnover could be 25% down for the year. For an industry whose practitioners so depend on a percentage of deals done, this was grim news. The weather stayed grey. In mid-afternoon, in a faraway legislative chamber, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, rose to present his budget for the year. By the time he sat down the UK property industry needed a strong drink (at least those in Cannes could immediately lay their hands on such a restorative). Stamp Duty on commercial property up 1%. Further pummelling of smaller residential investors. British banks once more urged to restrain their lending to property investors and developers. None of the reliefs and easings hoped for.
Some of the delegates began wishing they had foregone the south of France this year and attended Cheltenham races instead, Cheltenham Gold Cup Week. There is a school of thought that more business gets done there than at MIPIM. The drink is certainly cheaper and the location not so far from home. And no danger of been outnumbered by the pesky French.
But the south of France is the place for a party, and the party was still running. By late Wednesday night the wine bars were cheerfully forgetful and the karaoke machines in fine voice. A thousand renditions of Gladys Knight and the Pips rang excruciatingly across the harbour. In the hills the dinner parties boomed and disturbed the neighbours. Down below, Vincent Tchenguiz, a mainstay of the MIPIM party circuit by virtue of his super-yacht Veni, Vide, Vici, was loading champagne and property types of all professions in the outer harbour (“too big to get in the inner harbour, mon brave…”). It was a welcome return for Mr Tchenguiz who had not appeared at MIPIM since a slightly embarrassing incident just before MIPIM 2011 when he was arrested by the Serious Fraud Office (he was later cleared of all charges)
MIPIM ended on Friday, with the hungover delegates returning to homes and families, to sluice down alka-seltzer and sleep. And to wake on Saturday morning, to find joyfully that their curses on Mr Osborne had been heard, and rewarded early, in spectacular style.
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