This year, our seventh as John Forbes Consulting LLP, has obviously come to a close with the world in a highly unusual place. Although we have been working from home since 2013, the last three months have been even more at home than usual. Luckily 2020 was not a MIPIM year for us, we now only attend every second year, so we did not face a huge wasted cost for that.

Even before the Covid crisis, the real estate investment management industry had been facing many challenges. These have been compounded in the last few weeks by financial challenges and valuation uncertainty. We have been enormously busy working for our clients but also through John's industry roles and press interest in many of the topics that he has been covering, particularly the challenges for open-ended property funds.