William Pears Group
| The William Pears Group of Companies | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Limited Company |
| Seat |
London United Kingdom
|
| management |
|
| Branch | Real estate industry |
The William Pears Group is a real estate company founded in Great Britain around 1952 and operated as a family business.
The group is one of the largest real estate companies in the UK and owns several thousand properties. Pears Group is said to own nearly 7 billion euros (£ 6 billion) in real estate in London and south-east England.
Starting in 2014, the Pears Group bought real estate in Germany, especially in Berlin, through intricate subsidiaries. After journalists discovered these investments in Berlin, it is one of the groups that would be affected by a Berlin popular initiative launched in 2018 that wants to expropriate companies with more than 3,000 apartments.
history
The group was founded by the Austrian emigrant Bernard Pears and his son Clive in 1952. Bernard Pears had initially opened a vegetable business under his maiden name Bernard Schleicher, which he called “William Pears”, the last name he later adopted himself. Clive Pears' sons (Mark, Trevor and David) continued to run the company after his death. According to the 2011 Daily Telegraph, Mark Pears runs the company, Trevor runs the family foundation and David runs the real estate division.
By the beginning of 2009, the group had 15,000 buildings, apartments and shops in its portfolio. Together with the family foundation, the “Pears Trust”, the group is said to have owned assets worth more than £ 6 billion in 2009 . The Trillium Group's real estate division also became part of the group in 2009 for £ 750 million.
Controversy
The group has been criticized several times for its dealings with tenants. In around 2000, state-owned buildings were acquired and rents increased from £ 50 a week to £ 190. However, they were not aware of any guilt because they only charged the local rents.
The Pears Group came under renewed criticism in the 2010s when tenants in Berlin wanted to complain to the owners of their respective properties, but could not find out who the apartments actually belonged to. Only a research by the Tagesspiegel and the magazine Correctiv uncovered a deeply tiered network of letterbox companies in various tax havens behind the around 25 German property companies, with well over 3000 apartments. They assigned these to the two companies “Junifler Ltd.” and "Karayan Ltd." to the British Virgin Islands , which they consider part of the William Pears Group . The influence of the group on the Berlin real estate market was previously unknown to the Berlin Senate .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b "Decision 200810007 - Antipodean Properties Limited" linz.govt.nz of January 22, 2008
- ↑ Erik Peter: Left pub reveals real estate giants: The Syndicate . In: The daily newspaper: taz . November 19, 2018, ISSN 0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed April 1, 2020]).
- ^ "Let's all make it a bumper year for good causes, says man who gave away £ 30m" Evening Standard of February 13, 2012
- ↑ James Quinn: "Pears family comes out of the property shadows" telegraph.co.uk of June 12, 2011
- ↑ a b Rupert Steiner: "City Focus: The family behind £ 750m deal" thisismoney.co.uk of January 9, 2009
- ^ "The hidden empire" tagesspiegel.de of May 31, 2019