How will inflation impact the UK and Irish economies and commercial real estate markets?

Over 300 clients attended our breakfast briefing to receive the latest insights from renowned Economist and Professor of Globalisation & Development at Oxford University, Professor Ian Goldin.

Topics covered included:

• The impact the inflation environment has on commercial real estate in the UK & Ireland
• The extent to which commercial real estate is a hedge and which are the most attractive opportunities
• What to expect under the different inflation scenarios and how to prepare.

There was a cross section from across offices, retail, logistics and industrial audiences, spanning both investors and occupiers. The popularity of this event highlights the demand for insights within this space and bodes well for our forthcoming EMEA Inflation Report.

Andrew Phipps, Global Head of ESG Insight & Global Futurist for Cushman and Wakefield, hosted the event and Professor Goldin’s presentation was followed by a Q&A from our guests.

Professor Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Oxford Martin Research Programmes on Technological and Economic Change, Future of Work and Future of Development.

He is a former policy advisor to Nelson Mandela and named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.

Some highlights from Professor Goldin:

• "The big question is are we in a 'Goldilocks' moment where the wise central bankers will do things not too strongly to push us into recession but not too weakly to lead to an inflationary spiral, or is this the beginning of perhaps a ‘stagflation’ period where we have a combination of high inflation with low growth?"
• "To achieve the ‘Goldilocks’ middle ground […] the economy would have to cool off, and particularly the labour markets but also other markets, fast enough to bring inflation down but not so fast that they create a recession, where you get very high levels of unemployment, where output slumps because they choke the economy – that’s the 'Goldilocks' scenario. You want demand to decrease but you don’t want supply to decrease very much and that’s very difficult to achieve in this environment.”
• "2020 – 2021 saw the most rapid structural transformation of the global economy that has happened historically. This is very significant for commercial real estate markets."
• "We have the shock of how to soft land after the biggest binge that the world has ever known, this is like coming down after a very big hangover. […] 20 trillion dollars have been injected into the world economy over the last two years through quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus and increasing debt at a scale never done before leading to a sugar rush. As a result we had very high growth in 2021 and very low unemployment, but that is all being taken away now and we are in cold turkey territory."