Welcome
Waking on the morning of 24 June, I was surprised – not entirely pleasantly – to learn that the UK had voted to leave the European Union. The decision in favour of Brexit brought an end to one period of uncertainty but ushered in a new one. We do not know even when the formal process of divorce – to be activated via Article 50 of the European Treaty – will begin, let alone the kind of relationship that will ultimately emerge between the EU and the UK.
Real estate has already felt the effects of this uncertainty in the form of market turbulence, with a number of big UK transactions failing to complete and a run on open end funds investing in the UK. Hopefully this chapter is now coming to a close.
INREV will be supporting the industry through the months and years that lie ahead – however they turn out – but we need you as members to tell us what we are doing right and how we could do better. The annual membership survey, now available to complete online, is ideal for giving this kind of feedback. I would urge all members to complete the survey, which we use as a key input to our strategy and business plan. As a further incentive, we will be randomly selecting one survey participant to receive a complimentary pass, including accommodation, to next year’s INREV Annual Conference.
The 2017 Annual Conference, which takes place in Berlin on 4-5 April, is one of the events that will feature in the 2017 events calendar. When it appears in the next month or so, be sure to save all the dates in your diaries, as we are constantly adding new events to the calendar.
I particularly want to mention the new INREV Autumn Conference, which we are holding for the first time this year, on 3 November. We have designed this event to cover some of the more operational aspects of investment and vehicle management, with a programme including debt, portfolio management and market sectors. This should help fill a gap in our conferences, which previously confined themselves to toplevel strategy and the interests of young professionals. You can read about the recent Young Professionals Conference in this edition of IQ.
