What an incredible week for the Prologis team - and certainly one of the more memorable ones in my year and perhaps even career! 

Monday

It was a great pleasure to host Hamid Moghadam, our Chairman & CEO with Dan Letter, our President to the London office, the first time they've visited our new space in Soho.

Hamid and Dan kindly took the time to connect with the whole UK team, answering a range of questions on data centres, investor analyst sentiment, culture, marketing and many other areas. 

After, the UK Executive team spent time with Hamid & Dan to explore our current performance, upcoming projects and areas of continuous improvement and innovation. 

As a business leader, I find it exceptionally helpful and motivational for the teams to have this level of interaction with our global executive team and came away feeling positive for our momentum as we enter the final four months of the year.

Tuesday

A number of times when I've been interviewed about the importance of our sector to the UK, I've reflected that whilst the likes of housing developers are often invited to Downing Street, the invite for industrial and logistics (somewhat ironically) never seems to be delivered!

Hence it was a terrific step forward and great honour to enter numbers 10 and 11 on Tuesday with Hamid & Dan. We met with Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer for a wide raging conversation focused on the government's target to stimulate economic growth and opportunities to partner across a range of our investments in logistics, life sciences and data centres. We also met with Varun Chandra, Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Business & Investment, where we discussed International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment.

On the eve of Groundbreakers 2024, a group of 50 investors, MPs and public/private stakeholders attended a dinner hosted by Prologis in Westminster. A keynote speech was delivered by Jonathan Reyolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, followed by Q&A with the audience and covering topics including International Trade, Industrial Strategy, Jobs & Skills and Decarbonisation.

I am grateful to the hard work and persitance of Jason Longhurst and Connect PA for organising these meaningful exchanges with the new Government.

Wednesday

On Wednesday morning I joined Scott Marshall, our Chief Customer Officer, members of our European Customer Led Solutions team and our EU leadership team at our Customer Advisory Board. Great range of customers from across Europe and across sector sharing experiences of the market and challenges and opportunities ahead. Hugely valuable insight on things that our teams are doing well but also on what we can do better. 

In the afternoon, it was at privilege for the UK Team to host Prologis' global annual thought leadership conference - Groundbreakers 2024 – in London at the Outernet and streamed globally.

The scale of the event was like nothing I've seen before at Prologis and the calibre of speakers excellent. Reflecting on the event, I was struck by how AI and digital transformation is transforming supply chains. It was a topic which virtually all panelists touched on and, for UK businesses, something we should all be looking to whole heartedly embrace to maintain a competitive advantage.

As you might expect, such a large event isn't possible without a huge amount of organisation - congratulations to Tracy Ward and team for smashing it out of the park!

Thursday

The BPF's Logistics Property Board has been running for the last couple of years, and acts as strategic forum, with senior representation from the likes Segro, Tritax, Logicor, GLP, Amazon, Wincanton, DHL and Jaguar Land Rover.

Prologis hosted this board from our London office, where we discussed our sector's priorities with regard to emerging government policy, the upcoming Industrial Strategy, sustainability and industry trends which we are seeing. 

Whilst it may seem that we're competitors (and indeed, we are in a commercial sense), it's wonderful to be able to share best practice and knowledge across companies in areas where our joint voice can have much more of a positive impact.