William Pears Group

William Pears Group is one of Britain's largest property companies, with £6 billion of property in London and south-east England.

William Pears Group
Industryproperty
Founded1952
FounderBernard Pears
Headquarters
London
,
England
Key people
Mark Pears, CEO
The Spires Shopping Centre, Barnet, London

The William Pears Group was founded in 1952, by Bernard Pears (who changed his name from Schleicher on emigrating from Austria) and his son Clive Pears.[1] It is run by Mark Pears with his younger brothers Trevor and David.[2]

According to The Daily Telegraph, Mark Pears is a director of 212 companies, a "complex labyrinth of operating and investment companies", but won't say which is the main holding company or what the group's annual profit is.[2]

William Pears Group owns 3 - 4,000 London freehold residential properties, including large areas of Notting Hill.[2] In 2009, they were reported as owning 15,000 properties in total.[3]

In 2009, William Pears Group paid £750 million to Land Securities, to buy Telereal Trillium, a commercial property management and investment company.[3]

In April 2013, William Pears Group bought The Spires Shopping Centre in Barnet, London, from the bank UBS for a reported £34 million.[4]

Through Pears Global, they have "up to 6,200 apartments" in Berlin, managed through a series of "letterbox companies".[5] In 2019, a collaboration of investigative journalists in Germany, headed by Correctiv, tracked down the ownership of about 25 companies with property in Berlin to six firms in Luxembourg, who belong to two firms on Cyprus, who belong to two firms on the British Virgin Islands, who the journalists concluded to be controlled by the William Pears Group.[6]

The Pears brothers have invested in New York City as well, through the purchase of $147 million of at least 344 unsold condominium and cooperative units in mostly 1980s-era cooperatives and one rental building, according to PincusCo Media[7]. The acquisitions began as early as 2011 and the most recent was in June 2020.

References
  1. Cohen, David (13 February 2012). "Let's all make it a bumper year for good causes, says man who gave away £30m". Evening Standard. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  2. Quinn, James (12 June 2011). "Pears family comes out of the property shadows". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  3. Steiner, Rupert. "City Focus: The family behind £750m deal". thisismoney. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  4. Jones, Nick (9 April 2013). "New owner for the Spires Shopping Centre". Barnet Society. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
  5. "Syndikat: The local pub taking on a corporate giant". Freedom Press. 14 December 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  6. "Das verdeckte Imperium" [The concealed empire]. Der Tagesspiegel (in German). 31 May 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
  7. "Billionaire British Pears brothers quietly buy NYC unsold condos, co-ops in bulk". PincusCo. 2020-07-03. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
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