The EG Interview: Méka Brunel on driving diversity in real estate

With tongue slightly in cheek, Méka Brunel is explaining how her own background has driven her insights when it comes to diversity in business. “I’m a woman, my origin is Persian, I’m a left-hander, I’m short, my religion is the Baháʼí Faith, my blood group is AB+, a very rare one,” says the chief executive of Gecina, the €8.6bn market cap French REIT. “I’m checking many boxes in terms of minorities in general.” In her latest role, diversity and its benefits in business are front of mind for Brunel. Last month, she took up the chair at the European Public Real Estate Association, or EPRA, a trade organisation representing listed property companies and their investors. She has vowed to prioritise diversity and inclusion, as well as sustainability, during her two-year term. The need for change is pressing, she adds. “Maybe one of the good consequences of Covid will be that we focus on what is important and put aside what is not.” Opening up minds Brunel speaks with EG over a Microsoft Teams call from a boardroom in Gecina’s headquarters. The building has been open since May and Brunel is happy to be back, having recovered from a case of Covid-19 contracted during an investor roadshow in the early weeks of the pandemic. Her current position as one of real estate’s leading women may not be what was always envisioned for her. When she was a child, she says, her father thought her brother would become an engineer and Brunel “a pianist or a teacher”. But Brunel had other ideas: “I wanted to become an engineer.” And she did. (Her brother became a lawyer.) “At some point my father was disappointed,” she says. “But he had to agree that we did what was good for us.” It feels dispiriting to think that in 2020 our interview should still need to touch on the need for greater diversity in business, and that Brunel should have to highlight the issue as a necessary priority. “It’s ridiculous,” she agrees. “The more inclusive we are, the more we can consider that you’re opening up minds and improving our capacity to deal with the issues we are facing today.” If Brunel can set an example from the top of EPRA, she is happy to. She notes that the organisation has, until now, never had women both in chair and vice-chair roles (one of the organisation’s vice-chairs is Grainger chief executive Helen Gordon). “But we shouldn’t be just examples,” she says. “I think that we have made a lot of progress bringing women in different areas of industries at large,” she adds. “But still you’re facing a glass ceiling, globally speaking. A lot has to be done.” Much of that is a matter of education, she says, including better mentoring programmes. “Mentoring is giving a chance to everybody to [discover] their capacities, to develop their possibilities,” she says. “It’s not always obvious. I’m not sure that I have been successful with my daughters. I’m not sure I have always been successful with my colleagues. But this is the way we should do it.” Such initiatives should allow a wider variety of people to reach their full potential in a broader variety of roles. “The most beautiful gardens are the gardens with different kinds of flowers, not only one,” Brunel says. “If you have only roses, the same colour, it’ll be beautiful the first day, then you get used to that and you can find it boring.” Finding positives The Covid-19 pandemic is a chance for real estate – for the world – to reset, Brunel says, to “rebuild a new global order, which is much more inclusive”. “Each time we have a crisis, I always hope that we are going to learn and go in the best direction in terms of transformation,” she says. “Unfortunately, human beings can go back to bad habits.” But this time could be different. The pandemic is a rare, “truly global crisis” Brunel says – one that has affected countries “whatever their regime is, whatever their policy is, whatever their colour is, whatever their vision is of the future”. The consequences could, for once, be permanent. At the same time, Brunel is keen that the industry realises there are larger, longer-term challenges ahead, part of a “global transformation that we are facing now” – hence her second focus in the EPRA chair on sustainability. “I believe that if we want to deliver the right efficiency, numbers and returns for investors, we need to be more inclusive, more holistic, working harder in terms of climate change,” she says. The ESG agenda is “no longer about communication, it’s about our commitment,” she adds. “This is a unique opportunity. I’m not sure that we will succeed. But my colleagues at EPRA, whether they are investors or listed companies, are all committed to do the best we can do with the means we have. We are conscious that it is important.” Facing the storm At the same time as using her EPRA post to encourage industry-wide change over trends such as diversity and sustainability, Brunel faces the day-to-day challenges of steering Gecina itself through the crisis. The majority of the company’s portfolio is offices, and Brunel knows from conversations with local leaders in France that a shift towards more people working from home is a worry. “Some mayors now are facing the fact that corporates are leaving the offices in the cities, and it has a huge impact on the economy of their cities,” she says. The pandemic is reshaping how real estate owners and tenants interact. Our interview takes place on September’s quarter day, as landlords wait to see how much – or little – of the rent due from retailers is collected. In France, rents were waived for struggling smaller retailers early in the pandemic. In the UK, criticism has been levelled at the government for policies that favour tenants over landlords. Brunel knows a balance has to be struck. “It’s complicated to make the right decision,” she says. “I can understand governments getting emotional about that everywhere. But we need to consider that we’re an industry too.” This is a crucial point for Brunel, and the consequence of mismanaging reactions during the crisis are stark. “If the retailers are suffering and then the landlords are suffering, then people are suffering in terms of where to work, where to live,” she says. “This is about our cities and the way our cities are managed.” Rather than pitting one part of the economy against another, she adds, a more open, constructive dialogue is needed. And that can happen across borders, given the existence of bodies such as EPRA – with or without the B word. “I believe that it’s important to have local decision-making policy, but also [to have it] across Europe, which gives us much more capacity to do the right thing,” she says. “Of course, whether Brexit is going to take place or not, British companies are members of EPRA, and I think that it is very important to consider that you are closer to us [in France] in terms of geography than anywhere else in the world and we should help each other to understand better. “The more we are connected to each other and are supporting each other’s vision to compare and benchmark, the better we can answer to all our clients.” Clients – and investors. As our conversation draws to a close, I ask about the outlook for mergers and acquisitions. In the UK, there is chatter about private equity house KKR taking a stake in Great Portland Estates and African property investor Lighthouse Capital now owning close to one-fifth of Hammerson, the shopping centre owner of which Brunel is non-executive director. “Each time you have a crisis, you have also a consolidation across all kinds of industries,” Brunel replies. “The difference between today and the past is that you cannot only be a vulture-kind of fund, but you need to be capable to understand the underlying asset and you need to be long term. You mentioned Lighthouse, and as a board member of Hammerson, I think they are long term and they understand what the business is about.” But our conversation on that front may be premature, she adds. “Today is a little bit too soon to see the landscape after the storm. We are in the middle of the storm. It’s not yet over.” To send feedback, e-mail tim.burke@egi.co.uk or tweet @_tim_burke or @estatesgazette