British Land optimistic

British Land accompanied its full-year results with a confident forecast of the business’s future despite weak economic recovery in the UK. Chris Grigg, chief executive, said British Land’s retail portfolio was well positioned to benefit as retailers focused on locations that were accessible and affordable and could be adapted to their future needs.

“Our London office portfolio continues to benefit from the combination of strong investor demand for prime offices and a shortage of high quality space: we expect our major London development programme to generate significant returns,” he said.

British Land announced underlying pre-tax profit, excluding the effect of a £16 million provision release in 2009/10, up from £249m to £256m. Net asset value per share rose from £504p to 567p – 180 basis points ahead of the IPD benchmark. The value of the portfolio climbed 6.9 percent to £9.6bn.

Grigg said: “The strength of the group’s performance in the year reflects our focus on high quality and sustainable rental income streams; investing in assets which protect and grow capital value; creating incremental value through development, repositioning assets and exploiting market anomalies; controlling our costs; and exploiting our scale and financial strength.”