The EG Interview: AXA’s Isabelle Scemama on filling 22 Bishopsgate

Isabelle Scemama often found herself sleepless in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Locked down in Paris with her husband, daughters and dog Gaby, the AXA IM Alts global head spent her days hearing predictions that offices were dead and that Zoom would take over the world. Her company, meanwhile, was still putting the finishing touches to the newest, most advanced office tower in London, 22 Bishopsgate. It is no wonder she was feeling the heat. But 18 months later, we are sitting on the skyscraper’s 14th floor in AXA IM Alts’ London office, EC2, and Scemama is cool as you like. Above us, Apple – an existing tenant – has recently signed for three extra floors. Further above still, Wall Street legal giant Skadden is preparing to move in on a 15-year lease. They join a flurry of high-profile tenants revealed last year that cemented 22 Bishopsgate as one of the great success stories of London’s office market. And the pandemic, Scemama admits, may even have done the building some favours. “I don’t like to say Covid is helping – but it has accelerated a lot of trends,” says Scemama, also chief executive of AXA IM’s real assets division. “All the big corporates are rethinking the way they work. They have to offer their staff the opportunity to work one or two days a week from home. But you need the right facilities to adapt to this new way of working… So now tenants are coming here, or to other buildings that have the same level of facilities.” Among those facilities are a biometric facial recognition entry system, state-of-the-art lifts which move at nearly 18 miles per hour, and eight mobile phone beacons placed on each of the office floors to give maximum connectivity (especially important in the era of hybrid meetings). Workers can use the building’s app to control the temperature and the natural light – or just to book a meeting room. Meanwhile, the building has grabbed headlines for having a dog-friendly policy, part of a broader focus on wellness that includes a 20,000 sq ft food hub called The Market across the second floor, a members’ club on the 57th, and a gym with London’s first sky-wall climbing window at a dizzying 125m above the ground. Scemama laughs at the mention of the dog-friendly policy. “We can debate whether being able to bring your pet into the office is part of wellbeing or not,” she says. “The building can accommodate it, but it will be up to each company to decide whether to allow it. I won’t judge them.” (Scemama identifies as a dog-lover, though her own canine sparks “big debates” between her and her husband at home, she says. The breed? “A big one.”) “Wellbeing will become more and more important in offices,” she continues, pointing out that 22 Bishopsgate is the UK’s first skyscraper to achieve the WELL Building Standard wellness certification.  A key part of this, she adds, is in the operation of the building. “These days, you cannot just finish an office tower with all these features, close the door and wait for your cash flow. You have to run it yourself to really deliver on what is expected.” The best, then the rest This all comes as part of a broader trend in the office market that has seen demand for top quality buildings go through the roof, while class-B offices have fallen by the wayside. Many investors have spoken darkly about the latter, which risk becoming stranded assets in the coming years – but AXA IM Alts thinks it has a solution: converting them to homes. Scemama estimates that around one-in-three offices no longer fit for purpose will be turned into housing. “We are not developing new offices that directly replace old ones – we are building new offices to accommodate new ways of working. Many of those old ones can certainly be residential,” she says. This is even the subject of an experiment the company hopes to run in Paris, with a futuristic office building it recently agreed to bring forward with Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the Triangle Tower. The glass, flattened pyramid-like structure, inked for completion in 2026, will do everything 22 Bishopsgate does and more, with amenities including a conference centre, street-level shopping, restaurants and a hotel. The best bit? It will be designed specifically so that it can be turned into residential once the office portion becomes outdated. “This will be a reversible building,” Scemama says. “At some point in 20, 30, 40 years’ time we will decide to transform what is designed to be an office building into a residential one.” This means making considerations which will seem alien to most office developers: namely, making sure the Triangle can one day have the frequency of bathrooms needed for residential use. She adds, smiling: “We will see how it goes.” Staying close Scemama has been at AXA since 2001, when she joined as head of corporate finance after 11 years at BNP Paribas. She became the boss of AXA IM Alts just before the pandemic began, taking control of the other alternative asset classes the investment giant oversees, such as debt and structured finance (she has been in charge of the real estate segment since 2017). Today the company has some €168bn (£142bn) in assets under management, including more than €80bn of private real estate. She is one of the most powerful people in the industry on a global level. Nonetheless, she tries to stay hands-on. “I want to stay close to the business, close to the assets and close to the investments,” she says. “I continue to attend the investment committee before the big deals, and I try not to spend more than 20% of my time doing administrative or shareholder-related things. I really want to be on the ground, spending time with my team and finding solutions, and I think that is how the team perceives me too.” However, the fact that she is still one of the only women in such a position does not escape her, and she admits that there is still a reluctance to change in the male-dominated property world. “When we recruit people, the number of male CVs is continuously 80% or 70% of those that we receive. That has to change.” It is an issue brought into sharp focus when Scemama spoke to one of her three daughters, who studies at a London university, about the prospect of a career in her industry. Her response? “Real estate is for men.” The chief executive is adamant that university outreach is the solution, and is increasingly sending delegates to educational institutions to persuade young people to pursue a career in property. “We will not run a biased promotion process to favour women – it cannot work like that,” she says. “We have fantastic men and fantastic women in the organisation, and they must have the same opportunities and be treated fairly… If we want to deliver over time, we have to tackle the issue at university level.” As for AXA IM Alts? It has three women at the top: Scemama, head of client group Florence Dard and head of structured finance Deborah Shire. Scemama is sure that the company makes “better decisions” because they have this mix – including those it has made around 22 Bishopsgate in recent years. “We are saying a lot and doing a lot to change the industry,” she says. “But we still have much left to do.” To send feedback, e-mail alex.daniel@eg.co.uk or tweet @alexmdaniel or @EGPropertyNews © Main portrait: AXA; 22 Bishopsgate: Olha/Pexels; Other images: 22Bishopsgate.com Discover which agents are letting the most space in the City of London >>