This article by Andrew Byars, General Manager, Property Investments – Perron Group, forms part of SCN’s annual CEO Outlook feature published in Big Guns 2024. Premium members can view the full digital magazine here. 

Stan Perron AC, the late founder of Perron Group and a legend in the Property Hall of Fame, was not a person renowned for his use of complex technology – even when it came to making big decisions about his business or deals worth hundreds of millions.

In fact, when I first started at Perron Group, longer-serving executives would share a joke about Mr Perron doing the figures in his head about the expected yield on a shopping centre before they could even turn on their pocket calculators.

There were many things that made Stan Perron such a success in the property game, but there was one principle that he would always tell his executive team to follow: Keep it simple.

Even in today’s increasingly complex world, with all the talk about advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, I suspect Mr Perron would be sticking to his guns. The fact is, that in retail property, one simple rule sits above all others: Success comes from giving our customers what they want. Even though our sector has heard many doomsayers forecasting the death of retail and the downfall of shopping centres, at Perron Group we see a bright future ahead.There will inevitably be peaks and troughs, but as long as we are listening to the people who matter the most and meeting their needs and wants, we have no reason to be anything less than optimistic.

Of course, the nature of what our customers want is changing, and that’s why our management focus has been on staying one step ahead. Above all else, we believe that people visiting shopping centres want a great place to visit that is clean, vibrant, welcoming and, dare I say it, just plain fun. We are now so much more about destination marketing – having the right mix of retailers, product and service offerings and environments that become a natural magnet. Perron Group prides itself on being nimble, identifying joint venture partners with whom we can buy and maintain high-quality centres and maintaining agile decision-making processes that mean we never fall behind customer and tenant expectations.

Belmont Forum

It all comes back to a focus on people and, again, looking to the wisdom of our founder. Perron Group, the company Stan Perron built over an extraordinary lifetime of business success, is now valued at more than $6 billion, with diversified sources of revenue derived from a combination of directly managed businesses and a portfolio of investments.

This includes:

• Property — full or joint venture (JV) ownership of ten shopping centres across Australia as well as a 50% JV holding in Perth’s tallest office tower, Central Park.
• Land development – residential land estates in WA and Queensland.
• Toyota WA — exclusive rights to the wholesale distribution of the world’s leading brand of cars and commercial vehicles including parts and accessories.
• A significant portfolio of listed equities.
• An emerging program of private equity investment via a number of leading global funds.
• Infrastructure including significant stakes in several Australian airports as well as holdings in unlisted infrastructure funds.
• Mining royalties with a lucrative flow of earnings from iron ore in WA’s Pilbara region.

While he was immensely proud of his enormous commercial achievements, Mr Perron’s most enduring legacy was his wish, brought to fruition after his passing in 2018, that Perron Group should become a permanent endowment to maintain the work of the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation.

Now chaired by his daughter Elizabeth, who is also a director of Perron Group, the Foundation is active in supporting more than 200 charitable groups and is making major contributions to medical research, especially as it relates to the health and wellbeing of children. In the past few years, the Foundation has contributed tens of millions of dollars to these causes, albeit guided by the principle that impact matters more than the dollar amount given.

For everyone on the Perron Group team, this makes coming to work every day unique: Ultimately, the success of the business equates to the success of the Foundation in helping people in need.

Cockburn Gateway Shopping City

Which takes me back to the centricity of people in our belief about what will ultimately drive commercial value. The people-first approach underpins our desire to work with great joint venture partners, to draw on this company’s 50 years of experience in the shopping centre industry and to be much more than a passive investor. It is why we value our co-owners viewing us as a commercial and pragmatic partner is ready to step up when investment decisions need to be made. Likewise, it is why we value partners who are agile, informed and experienced, that understand what it takes to develop and maintain a shopping centre that drives customer demand.

This is very much what has driven the recent and ongoing upgrades in two of our prized assets in WA. Belmont Forum’s catchment has historically been a working class, lower-socio economic area, but as real estate affordability has become more of an issue in Perth, we are seeing a significant change in the local demographic. And this in turn has driven our redevelopment strategy. Adding more dining options and a fresh food market was a direct response to the growth in younger families and the changing nature of the demographic mix. As the centre has tilted its offerings to match the needs of its customer base, we have seen growth in foot traffic and revenue benefitting our tenants and driving revenue and profit.

A similar philosophy is being applied to Cockburn Central, uniquely positioned in Perth’s burgeoning southern corridor. In this case, our model is driven by the demand for people in the community for what amounts to a town centre – a place they can come to shop, work, live and play. Access to professional services and dining and entertainment outlets will all be part of creating a valued mixed-use development that has natural magnetism.

The forthcoming extension and redevelopment project, an investment that will grow into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming years, is quite simply about creating a place where people want to be. And that for us is the essence of a people centred strategy – listening, learning, building, upgrading and investing with partners who share our values and success.