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Growth: Relationships and Research
June 2010
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| Cheryl Gray, Senior Vice President National Real Estate Services at Bentall Capital LP |
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| *V-Report Sponsors |
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| *Not affiliated with V-Report Speakers |
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By Hayley Mitchell
Bentall LP began as a small construction company in 1911 and has become one of Canada’s largest real estate advisory and services organizations, with more than $16 billion in assets under its management. Bentall is privately owned and employs more than 1,100 staff at its various offices across the country. In Canadian Property Management Magazine’s 2010 Who’s Who listing of 200 companies in Canadian real estate, Bentall took the number three spot, reporting more than 80.8 million square feet of office, industrial and retail space under management.
Cheryl Gray, Senior Vice President, National Real Estate Services, has been with Bentall since 2000 and credits the growth of the company to three factors, all which involve relationships. The first reason is the relationships with existing clients and the performance of their assets under Bentall’s management. Due to the strong working relationship with these clients, Bentall’s portfolio of assets increased as the clients continued to acquire real estate. “We grew along with them,” says Gray.
Another key factor in any company growth is the ability to attract new clients. Gray credits the proven quality of service given to existing clients as the key to Bentall’s success in attracting and retaining new customers, which added significant growth to the portfolio. “Some of those [new clients] may have only owned a single building, , but some came to us with regional or national portfolios,” says Gray. Lastly and to a lesser extent, contributing to the company’s growth, were corporate acquisitions that occurred earlier in this decade.
So what is next for Bentall, in order to maintain this leadership position? “We will continue to focus on our fundamental strengths that have proven to be successful for us and more importantly, our clients – integrity, innovation and results. It’s also really important to us to maintain a leadership role and advance the principles of sustainability and responsible property investing with all of our stakeholders; clients, employees, tenants and service providers “We were the first Canadian real estate services advisory firm to become one of the signatories to the United Nation’s Principles of Responsible Investing Initiative and Bentall ranked first of 18 Canadian real estate firms that participated in 2009 in the Jantzi Sustainalytics report, in partnership with REALPac.
Lastly, innovation, research and development have always been a major part of Bentall’s priorities. “Our mandate is to continue to keep the company at the forefront of the industry by monitoring trends not only within Canada but around the globe. We encourage our employees to participate in the industry associations that support us, that help us remain educated and informed about those trends.” says Gray. NAIOP, BOMA, REALPac, ICSC, CaGBC and REIC are only some of the associations that Bentall employees and executives are not only members of, but who also have or currently serve on their governing boards.
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