This is a good news story for the British property sector, for data centers and those who use them and for those who rent or rely on digital services. It is good news for everyone and it could be good news for British pension schemes if they have the size and intent to invest in partnership. The FT’s Mary McDougall reports that Canadian pension property fund’s Quadreal is committing £2.5bn to lend to allow projects as different as data centres and residential property to progress, its spokesperson in the UK..

[Jonathan] Dubois-Phillips said that while the property group had not yet made any investments alongside British pension funds, he was “100 per cent open to it . . . we just haven’t really met them”.

I have a particular interest in data centers, I live in Slough, Britain and Europe’s most concentrated centre for data. It strikes me as ironic that Windsor is next door neighbour while Slough is regarded with the dim view of Betjamin and the Office

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

We haven’t really met them…

It seems obvious to those from America including Donald Trump that Britain is something of a treasure though we downgrade our treasures with our down-playing humour. Thankfully the perspective on Britain from USA and Canada is rather brighter!

QuadReal, which manages C$94bn (US$68bn) of real estate assets for British Columbia Investment Management, told the Financial Times it was launching a lending business in the UK that would commit the debt in the next three to five years, before expanding further into Europe.

The move comes after US tech groups including Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and OpenAI pledged to invest tens of billions of pounds to build computing infrastructure in the UK during Donald Trump’s state visit to the country this week.

“If you look at the data centre space, there is not enough capital around right now to suck up what’s being built,”

said Jonathan Dubois-Phillips, president for international real estate at QuadReal Property Group. “The scale of it is massive . . . there’s a huge demand for debt there”.

While we are throwing our pension schemes into annuities, are the annuities launching bond funds to compete with Quadreal, do we see our open DB and our DC sector engaging with QuadReal? Not yet it seems!

We would rather see the friendly bombs fall on Slough and eliminate the progress that John Betjeman (who died in 1984) did not live to see. Slough is still seen as home of the Office and Ricky Gervais has emigrated with the Office his legacy!

I spent last week hearing pleas to UK pension funds to listen. Matt Day  looking to reinvigorate British Housing  (Homes England), Paul Lewis of Principal Asset Management and Director of European Data Centres.

Paul’s photo has Slough in the background.

It is time pensions started taking property and data centers as seriously as demand requires

Property and Data Centers are both under supplied.

[Dubois Phillips] added that housing was a “big focus” of QuadReal, noting a “chronic undersupply” in the UK that made it “very expensive”, and that there was particular demand for “properly and professionally run” apartment buildings in the UK that are corporately owned.

“We really put our money where our mouth is in terms of believing in UK housing issues,” he said, noting that the UK currently represents 15 per cent of QuadReal’s global portfolio, a proportion that could rise to 20 per cent across debt and equity within the next five years.

So let’s hope that in three to five years time it will be UK as well as Canadian Pension Funds capitalising our residential property projects and our data centres. Let’s hope that people will stop laughing at Slough and start regarding it as they do overseas. We want the Thames Valley to match Silicon Valley. Our property to be upgraded and offered affordably.

Affordable homes upgraded with pension money?

I hope that this gets read by those who run our pension funds and doubt whether Britain is investable.