News - Midlands
Like most very wealthy entrepreneurs you come across, Robert Monk is an intensely private man, which, in all honesty, is something of a shame. This giant of the Nottingham property world (and at well over 6 ft he's pretty intimidating in real life) is a man with choice views on virtually everything. The only trouble is no one ever gets to hear them.
But granted an hour with Bob - as he is known to those in the trade - over coffee at his Nottingham head office, I set out to unleash at least a few of those views. I don't leave disappointed. Once Monk gets his teeth into a pet gripe he doesn't let go; in so doing he helplessly blurs the boundary between on and off the record for the purposes of our interview. "You cannot report that" becomes a popular refrain during our chat, although, thankfully, there are enough occasions when I presume I am given the all-clear to put pen to paper.
Monk's views on Nottingham's city living market are a good place to start, a market that many feel is on the brink of a rather stunning collapse.
"I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole," he snaps. "The bottom has dropped right out it. In fact I've just sold my own portfolio of apartments in the city because I wanted to get out just before the top. It is simply not sustainable. Where is the demand coming from? I wouldn't build apartments here in a million years."
What seems to particularly rankle Monk is that despite the fact, he says, there are already hundreds of empty apartments in the city, its next wave of schemes continue to be actively marketed across the globe.
"In six months' time, investors from various corners of the world will come back wanting to know where their rental income streams are," he adds.
Wearing both his trademark two-day stubble and open-necked shirt ("I don't do ties"), Monk is little more encouraged by the state of the city's office market.
"If someone speculatively builds a large office development in the city they would get it away. But I don't see anyone likely to do that at the moment. No one can find an anchor tenant," he says.
So is Nottingham's image to the wider world badly out of sync with reality?
"I think what you can say is that there is simply too much spin in this city," he says. However, Monk isn't quite so gloomy as to predict a full-scale crash in its residential market.
"I anticipate banks will start getting nervous about this in the near future but there won't be a crash as such, more a gentle slowdown," he says.
Talking of the city's image Monk believes far more can be done too on the marketing front.
"Talk to investors and they all know Nottingham for Robin Hood, yet why on earth haven't we built a dedicated medieval visitor centre? More should be done to sell Nottingham," he says.
Monk may be shooting from the hip but it's a passionate concern for the future of a home city that has treated him so well.
Monk's first business in the 1980s was Central Mini Mix, which provided ready-mixed concrete to building firms and that helped supply the dozens of terraced houses he was renovating in the city at the time. The business was sold to Tarmac and Monk Estates was set up on the proceeds in 1992, initially to build small supermarkets but later moving into the emerging student accommodation market.
Monk was a trailblazer, one of the very first to build privately financed student digs. Monk also started branching out into bigger mixed-use schemes and site assembly, most notably on Nottingham's waterfront, where he turned a former British Waterways warehouse into the city's first proper mixed-use scheme, Castle Wharf.
Today, Monk isn't that fussed about talking about the scheme, other than allowing himself a wry smile over how opinions have changed in the city.
"When we first started to look at the site, the council gave us grief, but now they're the ones who have their photos taken regularly down there," he says.
It sums up how Monk isn't interested in looking back.
To him, the next hill is always there to climb. "I'm only interested in the future. We are leaders, not followers," he says.
One particular hill which he spent the best part of the last five years climbing was clearing the way for the retail redevelopment of one of Nottingham's most notorious concrete blocks around Trinity Square.
Monk ended up making a small fortune after selling the site to Helical Bar for £317.5m in 2005 but admits it wasn't the easiest million he has made.
"There were 27 different tenants and I ended up paying ridiculous amounts of money for some parts of the site. We had to keep the whole project incredibly secret too," he says. "Once someone realises what you are doing, the price goes right up."
Monk's method of negotiation with landowners to push development through provides a stark contrast with ongoing efforts to redevelop Nottingham's Broadmarsh shopping centre where the city council and developer Westfield have gone down the tortuous CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) route.
"At Trinity, we were able to make very quick decisions and the council and others needed someone like ourselves to get hold of it by the scruff of the neck. You cannot be as nimble with the CPO route," he says.
Beating Broadmarsh to completion should prove highly significant.
While work on Trinity is due to complete in 2007 Westfield has yet to sign up a tenant and it looks like work won't begin until late in the year.
Still only 50, Monk has been a master of spotting such lucrative deals and being one step ahead of the market.
In fact, his bank balance has been in extremely rude shape in 2006.
As well as the Trinity sale and the sale of his Nottingham apartments, he has also sold his medical centre business, Primary Asset Management, to MedicX Properties.
Monk set up the business in 1999 to construct and manage new medical centres on behalf of Primary Care Trusts and GPs.
"Yep, I'm sitting on quite a cash pile," he chuckles.
However, Monk won't be sitting on much of his cash pile for long.
His next big thing is the retirement market and, more specifically, the construction of retirement villages.
"The UK has always been a bit old-fashioned. Our home is our castle and we pass it on to our children. Society increasingly accepts that children make their own money and that parents are prepared to spend more of their hard-earned money in retirement. We think that they are going to start moving into retirement village environments in serious numbers where they can live with like-minded people and have a social life."
Monk is planning three undisclosed sites, two in the Midlands and one in the south, and is talking to joint venture partners as we speak.
He says each village will cost £340m and will be funded by a mix of personal cash, funding from a joint venture partner and bank facilities. The funds are already in place, he stresses.
Each village will include up to 350 apartments and associated shops, restaurants and leisure facilities such as swimming pools.
It's hard to see any cracks in Monk's logic, although many might have thought he wasn't being entirely logical when he ploughed into the Russian farming market a few years back.
Monk, via his Heartland Farms business, now owns a farm of some 30,000 acres in the region of Penza, some 650 km south east of Moscow in the Volga region. He has invested some £32m in the land and a further £32m on buildings, machinery and infrastructure.
The rather bizarre investment came about through an old employee of Monk's who went to Russia to work as a contract harvester. "He told me to take a look because there are literally millions of acres of land out there where farms are derelict. Russia imports a staggering £313bn of food stuffs a year yet it has some of the most fertile land in Europe."
The plan is for all 30,000 acres to be under cultivation and planted by 2008. Monk stresses that, following two harvests, the project has already been a massive success. "It's gone so well we are negotiating to buy another 35,000 acre farm," he says.
What about Russia itself? Any trouble with the locals, mafia - that kind of thing? "Not a sniff he says," he says.
As the Russian venture shows, there will be no let-up in Monk's work rate.
"I'm 50 and in my prime. Why would I want to stop now?"
So expect to hear a lot, lot more about Bob fixing things in years to come.
To subscribe to Midlands Business Insider - click here
Bob can fix it
Like most very wealthy entrepreneurs you come across, Robert Monk is an intensely private man, which, in all honesty, is something of a shame. This giant of the Nottingham property world (and at well over 6 ft he's pretty intimidating in real life) is a man with choice views on virtually everything. The only trouble is no one ever gets to hear them.
But granted an hour with Bob - as he is known to those in the trade - over coffee at his Nottingham head office, I set out to unleash at least a few of those views. I don't leave disappointed. Once Monk gets his teeth into a pet gripe he doesn't let go; in so doing he helplessly blurs the boundary between on and off the record for the purposes of our interview. "You cannot report that" becomes a popular refrain during our chat, although, thankfully, there are enough occasions when I presume I am given the all-clear to put pen to paper.
Monk's views on Nottingham's city living market are a good place to start, a market that many feel is on the brink of a rather stunning collapse.
"I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole," he snaps. "The bottom has dropped right out it. In fact I've just sold my own portfolio of apartments in the city because I wanted to get out just before the top. It is simply not sustainable. Where is the demand coming from? I wouldn't build apartments here in a million years."
What seems to particularly rankle Monk is that despite the fact, he says, there are already hundreds of empty apartments in the city, its next wave of schemes continue to be actively marketed across the globe.
"In six months' time, investors from various corners of the world will come back wanting to know where their rental income streams are," he adds.
Wearing both his trademark two-day stubble and open-necked shirt ("I don't do ties"), Monk is little more encouraged by the state of the city's office market.
"If someone speculatively builds a large office development in the city they would get it away. But I don't see anyone likely to do that at the moment. No one can find an anchor tenant," he says.
So is Nottingham's image to the wider world badly out of sync with reality?
"I think what you can say is that there is simply too much spin in this city," he says. However, Monk isn't quite so gloomy as to predict a full-scale crash in its residential market.
"I anticipate banks will start getting nervous about this in the near future but there won't be a crash as such, more a gentle slowdown," he says.
Talking of the city's image Monk believes far more can be done too on the marketing front.
"Talk to investors and they all know Nottingham for Robin Hood, yet why on earth haven't we built a dedicated medieval visitor centre? More should be done to sell Nottingham," he says.
Monk may be shooting from the hip but it's a passionate concern for the future of a home city that has treated him so well.
Monk's first business in the 1980s was Central Mini Mix, which provided ready-mixed concrete to building firms and that helped supply the dozens of terraced houses he was renovating in the city at the time. The business was sold to Tarmac and Monk Estates was set up on the proceeds in 1992, initially to build small supermarkets but later moving into the emerging student accommodation market.
Monk was a trailblazer, one of the very first to build privately financed student digs. Monk also started branching out into bigger mixed-use schemes and site assembly, most notably on Nottingham's waterfront, where he turned a former British Waterways warehouse into the city's first proper mixed-use scheme, Castle Wharf.
Today, Monk isn't that fussed about talking about the scheme, other than allowing himself a wry smile over how opinions have changed in the city.
"When we first started to look at the site, the council gave us grief, but now they're the ones who have their photos taken regularly down there," he says.
It sums up how Monk isn't interested in looking back.
To him, the next hill is always there to climb. "I'm only interested in the future. We are leaders, not followers," he says.
One particular hill which he spent the best part of the last five years climbing was clearing the way for the retail redevelopment of one of Nottingham's most notorious concrete blocks around Trinity Square.
Monk ended up making a small fortune after selling the site to Helical Bar for £317.5m in 2005 but admits it wasn't the easiest million he has made.
"There were 27 different tenants and I ended up paying ridiculous amounts of money for some parts of the site. We had to keep the whole project incredibly secret too," he says. "Once someone realises what you are doing, the price goes right up."
Monk's method of negotiation with landowners to push development through provides a stark contrast with ongoing efforts to redevelop Nottingham's Broadmarsh shopping centre where the city council and developer Westfield have gone down the tortuous CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) route.
"At Trinity, we were able to make very quick decisions and the council and others needed someone like ourselves to get hold of it by the scruff of the neck. You cannot be as nimble with the CPO route," he says.
Beating Broadmarsh to completion should prove highly significant.
While work on Trinity is due to complete in 2007 Westfield has yet to sign up a tenant and it looks like work won't begin until late in the year.
Still only 50, Monk has been a master of spotting such lucrative deals and being one step ahead of the market.
In fact, his bank balance has been in extremely rude shape in 2006.
As well as the Trinity sale and the sale of his Nottingham apartments, he has also sold his medical centre business, Primary Asset Management, to MedicX Properties.
Monk set up the business in 1999 to construct and manage new medical centres on behalf of Primary Care Trusts and GPs.
"Yep, I'm sitting on quite a cash pile," he chuckles.
However, Monk won't be sitting on much of his cash pile for long.
His next big thing is the retirement market and, more specifically, the construction of retirement villages.
"The UK has always been a bit old-fashioned. Our home is our castle and we pass it on to our children. Society increasingly accepts that children make their own money and that parents are prepared to spend more of their hard-earned money in retirement. We think that they are going to start moving into retirement village environments in serious numbers where they can live with like-minded people and have a social life."
Monk is planning three undisclosed sites, two in the Midlands and one in the south, and is talking to joint venture partners as we speak.
He says each village will cost £340m and will be funded by a mix of personal cash, funding from a joint venture partner and bank facilities. The funds are already in place, he stresses.
Each village will include up to 350 apartments and associated shops, restaurants and leisure facilities such as swimming pools.
It's hard to see any cracks in Monk's logic, although many might have thought he wasn't being entirely logical when he ploughed into the Russian farming market a few years back.
Monk, via his Heartland Farms business, now owns a farm of some 30,000 acres in the region of Penza, some 650 km south east of Moscow in the Volga region. He has invested some £32m in the land and a further £32m on buildings, machinery and infrastructure.
The rather bizarre investment came about through an old employee of Monk's who went to Russia to work as a contract harvester. "He told me to take a look because there are literally millions of acres of land out there where farms are derelict. Russia imports a staggering £313bn of food stuffs a year yet it has some of the most fertile land in Europe."
The plan is for all 30,000 acres to be under cultivation and planted by 2008. Monk stresses that, following two harvests, the project has already been a massive success. "It's gone so well we are negotiating to buy another 35,000 acre farm," he says.
What about Russia itself? Any trouble with the locals, mafia - that kind of thing? "Not a sniff he says," he says.
As the Russian venture shows, there will be no let-up in Monk's work rate.
"I'm 50 and in my prime. Why would I want to stop now?"
So expect to hear a lot, lot more about Bob fixing things in years to come.
To subscribe to Midlands Business Insider - click here