Thank you for downloading the Bottom Line podcast. This week, Evan Davis asks his panel of top business executives about the importance of business location and the decisions companies make about where they put themselves.

Hello and welcome to the bottom line. You build a factory or open a business, does it matter where you do it? My guests will tell me what matters

to them in choosing the perfect spot. And electronic communication. In the week that Facebook

launched its own new messaging service, people are suggesting that email looks a little old-fashioned.

We'll discuss the role of email amid all the different ways of messaging and communicating.

But before we get to those topics, let's spend a few minutes meeting each of my three guests.

And first is Chris Grigg, who's chief executive of the property company, British Land.

Chris just give us some examples of the kind of properties.

Sure. Well, we're in two businesses. We're in the retail business.

About two thirds of our businesses in retail parks, superstores, scattered all over the country, and the third of our business is in London offices, both in the West End and the city of London. Right. So you're pretty good barometer of the economy in many respects. In many respects, commercial properties are better barometer than house prices, which get a lot of

attention, don't they?

What is happening in your world?

Well, we saw a dramatic fall in prices around the time of the crisis.

I mean, really spectacular 40% plus falls.

And we've seen a big recovery, not at that size, but certainly a much improved situation,

which is probably good for everybody and certainly

obviously been good for our business. I have been surprised at how much physical development

I've seen going on, particularly around these parts in London and places. You see cranes and you

see building occurring. Yes. I really thought after the crisis we weren't going to see anybody

building anything new for quite a few years. I mean, why is anyone building anything? You've got empty buildings around the place, haven't you? We're lucky we don't have any empty buildings. I think there are two things that are going on. First of all, in London, you see a lot of this construction is related to residential accommodation, and actually residential at the top end hasn't seen any fall in prices. In fact, quite the reverse. It's continued to go up with a blip or two. The commercial development, there's actually less of it than historically has been the case. And we see a lot of buildings coming to the end of their effective life. So we think that, in some degree, makes sense. Right. So there's always going to be some natural turbo as buildings basically depreciation.

And there's actually a glut coming along

because there was a building boom 15, 20 years ago.

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