Lynda Shillaw: the property leader who’s transforming her home city with TCS

For several years, Lynda Shillaw travelled across the Pennines from Leeds to her office at Manchester Airport – a commute, she says, that’s harder than travelling to London. But the journey was worth it. As chief executive of MAG Property, she led a £1bn commercial development that continues to transform the area. But four years into her role, having built up a major portfolio for MAG and after securing The Hut Group on 1m sq ft of office space at the airport, she has come home. Shillaw joined Leeds-based investor and developer Town Centre Securities a month ago as group property director. The timing of her departure from MAG Property was right, she says: “I was hired to create an investible property company – something that at some point in the future, should MAG choose to, they could dispose of.” She built the brand, the business and the team to take the project forward, and it was time to move on. With a portfolio of £400m and a development pipeline of close to £600m – largely across Leeds and Manchester – Town Centre Securities gave Shillaw the opportunity to jump on board another growth opportunity. Shillaw says she loves projects that are “big and complicated”, but her enthusiasm suggests it’s more than that: “The Brucie Bonus was actually it is in my home city, and you know what? I get to develop stuff in my home city. “It’s a well-run business that really cares about the cities it’s investing in and its stakeholders.” Just under three-quarters of Town Centre Securities’ portfolio is in Leeds and Manchester, with smaller footprints across London and Scotland. It has historically been retail- and leisure-focused, but has in recent years cut its exposure to these sectors to about 55%. The best career move Shillaw’s new role is the latest in a career defined by big and complicated ventures – and the occasional left-field turn. A management accountant by training, she joined BT in September 1988 and found herself shunted into the company’s building services team. “It was the only job that they had in finance. That’s where they put people they don’t have another job for. “I didn’t think it was the best career move. It actually was the best career move – with hindsight – that I never deliberately made because that opened up the rest of my career in real estate.” After 18 years at BT – where she found herself as part of the senior team that did the £2.4bn sale-and-leaseback of BT’s assets to Telereal Trillium in 2001 – she joined the Co-operative Group. There, she helped develop the strategy on 20 acres across central Manchester, which became NOMA. By the time she left in 2010 to join Lloyds Bank’s real estate team in the aftermath of the financial crisis (“probably the hardest thing I have ever done”), she saw the impact her work had had on the city. “It just amazed me, when I disappeared from Manchester into my next job, to come back to Manchester for a meeting, stick the place I was looking for into Google Maps and then see this whole area called NOMA. “I remember saying to one of my kids, ‘NOMA – you know, we created that. That didn’t exist.’ And they look at you and go ‘Oh, whatever.’ While I was hugely excited, I think my children don’t see it as quite the same type of achievement.” Responsibility With decades of real estate experience under her belt, Shillaw feels a sense of responsibility to be a leader within the industry. “As a leader of a business, or a senior figure in an industry, I think you do have a responsibility to be visible both inside your business and outside your business as well – particularly a senior woman in the decade we have been through.” She says she promised herself that by the time her daughter – now 19 – entered the world of work it would be normal for her to walk into a room that was equally male and female. “I was actually beginning to think I might have failed on that mission to change mankind, and I think a lot of senior women I knew were probably in the same boat,” Shillaw says. But the past five years, she adds, have brought more change than any point in the last 15. The challenge, she says, is to make sure more women climb the corporate ladder. A major part of that is pressing for shared parental leave. Shillaw recalls talking to a man who was considering taking parental leave but was worried about how it would affect his career. As a mother of three, her immediate reaction was: “Welcome to my world!” But she didn’t say that. “Actually what I said – because I thought that would have been really trite – was: ‘If your business is supporting you to do it, you should do it. And the more of you who do it, the more normal it becomes.’” Coming home Shared parental roles have helped Shillaw pursue her career – her husband works in Leeds and was at home in the mornings and evenings if she wasn’t – and her family has noticed the change with her working closer to home. “I think it’s more freaky for the rest of my family. They have been used to me turning up between 8.30pm and 9pm at night – if at all. I can now normally be back at 7pm. So we eat earlier and I’ve probably watched a bit more TV than I would normally watch,” she says. In the months between her jobs at MAG Property and Town Centre Securities, Shillaw says she found herself devouring books, reading until lunchtime – crime being her genre of choice – and she now has time to exercise more and play tennis in the evenings. But the thought of doing less work does not appeal to her. Property, she says, is like heroin. “It’s in your blood. Once you get the sector under your skin, it’s actually quite hard to get it out of your system.” So despite cutting out four hours of daily commutes, Shillaw has spent as many nights away from home as she has at home in the first four weeks at Town Centre Securities. And, unfortunately, tennis this week was cancelled because she has to be in Glasgow. But missing a few hours of tennis here and there is worth the task that lies ahead for Shillaw. As she begins to build a strategy for the coming decade with Edward Ziff, chairman and chief executive of Town Centre Securities, she finally has the opportunity to take the skills and drive that regenerated whole areas of Manchester back home to her side of the Pennines. Listen to EG’s interview with Lynda Shillaw for more on the twists and turns in her career, her thoughts on the Northern Powerhouse and the people who have inspired her throughout the years. Lynda Shillaw’s Desert Island Discs Naming one album is a struggle, but Shillaw’s first reaction is Electric Light Orchestra’s 1971 self-titled debut (“which probably dates me hugely”, she says). Anything by the Eagles or Meatloaf also goes (“which dates me equally”). As for karaoke, rumour has it Shillaw does a killer rendition of The Killers’ Mr Brightside. Lynda Shillaw’s CV 1988-2006: BT – various roles, including property director 2006-2010: The Co-operative Group – managing director, Co-operative Estates 2010-2012: Lloyds Bank – managing director, real estate 2012-2014: Scottish Widows Investment Partnership – property director 2014-2018: Manchester Airports Group – chief executive, property 2018-ongoing: Town Centre Securities – group property director 2017-ongoing: Vivid – non-executive director 2018-ongoing: The Crown Estate – non-executive director To send feedback, e-mail karl.tomusk@egi.co.uk or tweet @karltomusk or @estatesgazette