Absent friends?

How to spoil a report from the beginning? By starting with some statistics... However, I will risk doing so this time, because they may put to bed some of the unease that this year’s MIPIM “seems slightly smaller somehow”, “there’s more space in the corridors” and the general sense that “there’s something missing”. However, the numbers speak for themselves – 22,000 guests representing 93 countries is a number comparable to previous years. However, there was a certain sense of something lacking – namely, the guests from Russia, who stood out in terms of the scale of their presence in previous years, but were considerably less visible this year. However, participants from Turkey tried their best to replace them, displaying a particularly impressive scale model of Istanbul – and unlike the much touted enlarged scale model of London, it delighted everyone with its detail and richness of colours. Guests from the land of the rising sun also made their presence felt. While Kyiv mayor and former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who was going out of his way to promote the capital of Ukraine, simply could not extricate himself from the investors and financiers keen to gauge the situation in the country. He also found some time for an exclusive interview for Eurobuild TV, which is available on our video channel on the EurobuildCEE.com website and YouTube.

The visibility of those attending from Central Europe (particularly from the Czech Republic and the Baltic States) was worthy of admiration. The main players representing the region at the fair, of course, included Poland, the presence of which could not have been missed as soon as you came through the main entrance. The country’s stand featured a huge banner encouraging investors to invest in the land of kiełbasa. Polish EU commissioner and member of the competition jury, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, honoured the MIPIM Awards gala with her presence and was actively involved in the promotion of Polish cities at the fair. When it came to these, most of the activity was on the Łódź, TriCity, Kraków and Warsaw stands. Daniel Libeskind, who attended a banquet held at the Polish capital’s stand, could not hide his satisfaction when interviewed for Eurobuild TV with the relaunching of the work on his only project so far in Poland – Złota 44. Eurobuild TV also brought back exclusive interviews: with Arvi A.I. Luoma, the managing director of W.P. Carey, who told us about the kinds of properties he looks out for; and with Terence Tang, the managing director of the Asian capital markets department at Colliers International, who detailed the sort of European purchases interesting to Asian investors. Maciej Zajdel (until recently at IVG) also spoke to us about his new career. While in the lobby plans were revealed to us for a new skyscraper in Warsaw that might even put the Palace of Culture and Science in the shade – literally. The design is already being prepared on the drawing boards of one of the most famous architects in the world. However, we will only be able to give you more details about it and show you the visualisations in a few months’ time. So we encourage you to keep reading our magazine and follow our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter profiles.