IN FOCUS: THE HIVE ‘ WE KNEW MANCHESTER WOULD REGENERATE LIKE LONDON’

The Hive is an office building in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. It is 700 yards from Manchester Piccadilly station, but for a long time the area was very much a no-go zone. It had bars and restaurants, but it was not somewhere you’d spend much time at night.

The process of the Northern Quarter regenerating itself was very much like we saw in London with Shoreditch, where tech and media and creative businesses looked for trendier areas. What the team identified was that the process in London would happen in Manchester as well. So we bought a top-quality office building that had been built in what was a B location. It was around 22pc vacant when we acquired it in 2015 and average rents were £15-£16 a square foot. That’s a huge discount to where prime rents were in Manchester at that time.

We filled up all that vacant space within 18 months. What we are now seeing is rents in that building going up to £20 a foot and beyond. So the asset has probably increased in value by 25pc-30pc since acquisition and has been fully incomeproducing throughout.

It still has a lot to offer because there isn’t much office space in Manchester.

While it took us a lot more work than we liked, we largely recovered our position. There was a slight loss.

Do you both have your own money in the fund?

That’s a yes, for both of us.

How are you paid? DW:

We are both remunerated broadly in the same fashion. We receive a basic salary then a bonus, linked to the performance of the fund that we run. So in terms of the money we take home and the money we have invested, we are very directly linked to the success of the fund.

What did you dream of doing as a child? RP:

Once I realised I wasn’t going to be a professional footballer, at the age of 11, I wanted to be a geographer or adventurer.

I did a degree in zoology. I have a passion for the environment and sciences. In my spare time even now I go to game parks, and I should add I’m married to a vet, so that further encourages me along that route.

DW: