Built to last

It is undoubtedly a sign of the times when a journalist can get two hours with the chairman of a £50m quoted property company and the first half an hour is spent looking at pictures of a recent classic car rally – the world-famous 1,000-mile Mille Miglia – he had been on in Italy.

But Anton Bilton, 43-year-old head of property company The Raven Group, is unequivocal about the shape of the UK real estate market. ‘It’s absolutely desperate out there, virtually no bank debt and the beginnings of tenant default; the worst I’ve ever seen. We are simply not interested in the UK at present and are recharging our batteries while we wait for highly distressed opportunities to start appearing.’

As if to emphasise the point, Bilton reveals that his fleet of classic cars will shortly be going up for auction at Sotheby’s. The days of conspicuous consumption, he says, are well and truly over.

But if Bilton is feeling the pinch now, it is clear that his long-term vision for Raven is unlikely to be put off track by the current economic crisis. His huge Knightsbridge office overlooking Hyde Park is symptomatic of his ‘work hard, play hard’ philosophy. Among the tasteful art and furniture sit pictures of his wife – the American actress Lisa B – and family, while a flick through the press-cuttings file on the coffee table reveals a man equally at home in the gossip columns as he is in the mainstream financial press.

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