Business Centre Reflections

In response to:MLS Bites the Dust

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:57:00 +0200

Well there you have it from someone with direct experience. Certainly it is clear that if MLS had been better managed it might still be here today. Some people in the industry had been predicting its demise for five years.

My fund was the landlord of one of their centres for some years. That was not a comfortable experience either.

In response to:MLS Bites the Dust

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:12:12 +0200

I am afraid that many clients actually lost their deposits ... Unless they signed a new contract with the new operator for 12 months ...

I also would like to point out that MLS asked clients to pay the rent even after the legal entities went into voluntary liquidation (however the management did not inform neither the staff on site nor the clients)... but they made sure that the money went into different legal entity's bank account (one that was not in liquidation).

If MLS put as much effort into looking after their staff, contractors and clients as they did into trying to rip them off they would not go bust ...

If you want the fact ... contact the clients ...

In response to:Welcome!

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 14:02:22 +0200

Thanks to all who responded from execsuites@yahoo and the BCA discussion group and from FIABCI. For those who don't recognise the acronyms, the BCA is the Business Centre Association, based in the UK and FIABCI is the International Real Estate Federation based in Paris, but with chapters all over the world. URLs are www.bca.uk.com and www.fiabci.com

In response to:Welcome!

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 00:03:44 +0200

Jonathan, thank you for your kind invitation to post our announcement in your blog! This is exciting and we wish you the very best.

Esuite is pleased to announce the roll-out of the Local City Pages Directories for major markets throughout the world.

We invite you to visit and see what the excitement is all about!

In response to:Welcome!

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 17:23:00 +0200

Jonathan, great way to define your market. Please check out my Environmental Blog to collect stories from FIABCI members. The site is http//hotglobe@blogspot.com

In response to:Welcome!

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 10:35:30 +0200

Hi Jonathan,

Great idea, looking forward to reading about the "money" side of developing our businesses. Am at that stage now of looking for centre no.2....

In response to:Welcome!

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 09:40:44 +0200

Nice looking blog, Jonathan, always the innovator.

In response to:What's the point?

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 09:11:22 +0200

Good job Jonathan and long live this business center focused blog!

I have hot news from the wire, as I am coming out of a meeting with Mark Golan , VP of Wordwide Real Estate at Cisco Systems, which followed a similar meeting I had with Glenn Cooper, Senior VP of Real Estate at Schwab, a couple of days ago in San Francisco. Both Cisco and Schwab are prominent Fortune 500 companies with -in my mind- thousands of potential users of hosted flexible office solutions.

In both cases the message was strikingly similar. They anticipate their company use of business centers to grow considerably in the future. They are also challenging our industry to mature with better standards, single point of contact, more dots on the map, and a few other requests that are actually not that difficult to meet.

They acknowledged that some of us have made real progress in that direction, and they looked favorably at the plans others are making to leapfrog to the next flexible office solution. I am obviously biased here as I presented aspects of our own growth plans that were met with enthusiasm.

The bottom line is that the picture is one of a bright future for our industry. But the future is not distant: there is no shortage of opportunities today.

So what's most needed in our industry to get to the next level? Not the entrepreneurial spirit alive in so many of us and not a lack of talent and creativity. New leaders are emerging, ready to take on the challenge by the horns, in all continents.

In my view, what we need the most are folks like you Jonathan. Investment bankers that can specialize in our industry and reveal the fabulous opportunity we represent to a diversified source of fresh capital.

We need visionary investment bankers who can help us emulate the U.S. commercial real estate industry of the early 90's, when the emergence of public REITs provided an efficient and disciplined access to public capital. Perhaps in a smaller scale, but why not?

A few of us have serious growth plans built on solid track records that inspire confidence and new formulas adapted to the times ahead. And the magic potion: the potential for excess return on invested capital, adjusted for risk. The ball in in your court, Mr. Investmennt Bankers, to unleash the opportunities.

Call me and my friends in this industry any time!

Laurent

[Laurent Dhollande is President of Pacific Business Centers, Inc, with 9 centers in California and growing. www.pbcoffices.com]