William Pears Group is one of Britain's largest property companies, with £6 billion of property in London and south-east England.
| Industry | property |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1952 |
| Founder | Bernard Pears |
| Headquarters | London , England |
Key people | Mark Pears, CEO |
The William Pears Group was founded in 1952, by Bernard Pears and his son Clive Pears.[1] It is run by Mark Pears with his younger brothers Trevor and David.[2] There was never a person named William Pears in the business: Bernard Pears changed his name from Bernard Schleicher to the "more English-sounding" Pears, and set up a fruit and vegetable business under the name William Pears because of the Williams pear fruit name.[1]
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, William Pears Group paid £750 million to Land Securities, to buy Telereal Trillium, a commercial property management and investment company.[citation needed]
In April 2013, William Pears Group bought The Spires Shopping Centre in Barnet, London, from the bank UBS for a reported £34 million.[3] The Spires has since been bought by the Canadian investment fund AIMco.
Through Pears Global, they have "up to 6,200 apartments" in Berlin, managed through a series of "letterbox companies".[4] 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.[5]
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.[6] The acquisitions began in 2011.
Pears Foundation
editThe Pears Foundation, formally The Pears Family Charitable Foundation, is a charity established by the Pears family "to apply some of the resources of their family’s business, the William Pears Group, to fund organisations and projects working to deliver progress on key issues affecting the wellbeing of people in the UK and all over the world".[7] It was founded in 1992, and in the five years prior to 2012 it gave £30 million to charitable causes.[1] A 2017 report listed it as the 31st largest foundation (and 18th-largest family foundation) by size of donations, having given £16.32 million in the year ending March 2016.[8] In the year 2022/23 its charitable expenditure was £23.3 million, the largest donations being £5 million to the UK Youth Fund (part of UK Youth),[9] and £1 million each to Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Home-Start UK and Samaritans.[10] As of 2024[update] Trevor Pears is its full-time Executive Chair.[11][7]
Organisations and initiatives supported by the foundation include the Pears Cumbria School of Medicine (a cooperation between the University of Cumbria and Imperial College London),[12] The Scout Association,[13] Carers Trust,[14] and other medical projects including the Pears Building at the Royal Free Hospital, the Kent and Medway Medical School, the Clarice Pears Building at the University of Glasgow (named after Clive Pears's Glasgow-born wife, Clarice, mother of David, Mark and Trevor)[15] and the Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People in London, which is a joint project of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, the Maudsley Charity, and King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience.[16][17][18]
References
edit- ^ a b c 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.
- ^ a b c Quinn, James (12 June 2011). "Pears family comes out of the property shadows". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
- ^ Jones, Nick (9 April 2013). "New owner for the Spires Shopping Centre". Barnet Society. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
- ^ "Syndikat: The local pub taking on a corporate giant". Freedom Press. 14 December 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
- ^ "Das verdeckte Imperium" [The concealed empire]. Der Tagesspiegel (in German). 31 May 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
- ^ "Billionaire British Pears brothers quietly buy NYC unsold condos, co-ops in bulk". PincusCo. 2020-07-03. Retrieved 2020-07-04.
- ^ a b "Who We Are". Pears Foundation. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
- ^ Pharaoh, Cathy; Walker, Catherine; Keiran, Goddard. "Giving Trends 2017: Top 300 Foundation Grant-Makers" (PDF). Association of Charitable Foundations. p. 23. Retrieved 19 September 2024.
- ^ "The UK Youth Fund: Thriving Minds". UK Youth. Retrieved 19 September 2024.
- ^ "Annual Report and Financial Statement for the year ended 31 March 2023". The Pears Family Charitable Foundation. pp. 5, 16. Retrieved 18 September 2024 – via Charity Commission.
- ^ "The Pears Family Charitable Foundation, registered charity no. 1009195". Charity Commission for England and Wales.
- ^ "Imperial and Cumbria". Imperial College London. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
- ^ "Scouts – Pears Foundation". www.scouts.org.uk. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
- ^ "Support from Pears Foundation". carers.org. Carers Trust. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
- ^ Mcarthur, Maxine (21 November 2018). "Mum's the word for 40m uni health centre". Evening Times. p. M10. Retrieved 19 September 2024 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ Lorenzato-Lloyd, Alice (5 February 2020). "McAlpine team chosen for £65m south London mental health hospital". Building. Retrieved 19 September 2024.
- ^ "New centre of excellence for children and young people's mental health". Charity Today News. 5 February 2020. Retrieved 19 September 2024.
- ^ "Pears Foundation". The Pears Cumbria School of Medicine. Retrieved 18 September 2024.