Emmanuel FARCIS
Managing Director - Group Asset Management
Link believes that every asset is unique, just like every person who enters through its doors is special and not to be repeated. Similar to how parents nurture children to do and be their very best, it feels that a property’s full potential must be realised for it to truly thrive. This position applies to every asset it is responsible for, yet its execution is completely different every time. Asset planning, enhancement and management are where its wealth of experience shines.
Link understood from day one that different methodologies are critical because unlocking potential is tricky: there is no guaranteed formula. It starts through careful study of each locale: its situation, its surroundings, its competitors, its culture, its hardware, its software, and aspects special to each project. Most important to unlocking potential is sensitivity to people—both those who inhabit it and those who may do so.
Sometimes the asset is an under-utilised complex that needs sensitive seeding. Sometimes intervention is necessary to unleash its latent appeal. And sometimes it is better to ride out or exercise tough love by letting it go. Cutting ties at the end of a property’s cycle is occasionally part of a day’s work.
Every morning, Emmanuel Farcis, Managing Director of Group Asset Management, walks through the doors at The Quayside as if entering his own family business. The French native takes pride and ownership in his team’s work across Link’s entire portfolio of projects, constantly assessing and re-assessing to ascertain they are all performing at their peak.
He steers placemaking endeavours aided by site visits before, during and after interventions to gauge what needs to change and what works. He drops by properties incognito after weekend family hikes to shop in Fresh Markets, observing everything from lighting to how people move through spaces. Emmanuel is like everyone's favourite godfather: he orchestrates for every detail of an asset to play its part with the ultimate goal of enriching impacted stakeholders and communities. “I look at the sustainability of a property,” he explains. “If three or five years down the road, will it generate the same or better incomes? After all, the family depends on that for our livelihood.”
At the same time, Emmanuel appreciates that Link is not an actual family business with leaders that may have conflicting values or legacy projects that cannot be touched. “I don’t have someone calling me in the middle of the night to change a light bulb,” he says with a grin, referencing an urban legend where a family business owner did just that to one of his senior staff members. “There is no family attached; no founding myth to uphold; no emotional attachment. I am attached to Link as a company and am proud of our achievements. We endeavour to run our assets the best we can, recognising that each has different cycles and evolutions—that’s our mindset.”
Being with Link since almost its inception means that Emmanuel has seen it transform from a local company with international aspirations to achieving world class status and recognition. Yet he is not one to rest on his laurels. “The nature of retail is a moving, living thing,” he states. “Trends evolve all the time. We cannot stand still. To be an agent of change is to understand why things change; to accept that things are never static. And retail is intertwined with people’s daily lives and activities—non-discretionary or daily necessities are where we are most active and where we excel.”
Alongside the constant changes of retail is the evolution of asset enhancement. When Emmanuel first joined Link, many of its properties were poorly maintained and well below international standards both in design and management, requiring complete overhauls. Time was necessary for them to ramp up to their full potential as Link learned what made up the right tenant mix for each particular community; only then could the latter be serviced better. More recent projects have been smaller in scope with more immediate repercussions upon the community. The constant over time is finding a delicate balance between what needs to be changed and what needs to be maintained.
“The earlier asset enhancement projects were open heart surgery: we had to put in escalators and air conditioning,” he recalls, adding that to get the community onboard, Link conducted mini town halls. “We hosted dim sum lunches and invited existing tenants and the community to explain what we planned to do. It was about selling the dream. Now that we have more than 100 asset enhancements under our belt, neighbourhoods are a lot less resistant. Today, people get us.”
Link maintains quality control with in-house asset planning, enhancement and management experts. Its teams range from research and development to technical enhancement; and project management to leasing. The ability to keep it all in the family gives Link flexibility to move into other realms beyond its core strengths, maintaining resilience during challenging economic times. It is expanding its development expertise upon the strength of lessons learned through building The Quayside and The Anderson from scratch. It is expanding across the globe in acquisition and management where previously it only operated assets that it owned.
“We are creating skills beyond what we have so far,” reveals Emmanuel. “Everything we have done to date is a foundation for what we can do in the future. If we haven’t been through the past two decades, we cannot offer the enhancement and management experience we do now. We are expanding abroad and view further diversification as the next step. In Singapore, we manage our assets there alongside those of third parties, operating them all with the same dedication as if they were our personal family businesses. In Australia, we are in joint ventures and have strong relationships with our partners. Owners seek us out because of our ability to transform assets. In the end though, we still need to pick the right assets and manage them the best we can.”
Walking around a Link property today, Emmanuel is like a proud papa. The buzz, the intensity, the atmosphere of people living life where they feel invested affirms that all of Link’s efforts at planning and enhancement are worth it. He hopes that people equate Link with reliability and trust, fully appreciating the caveat that both take time to develop. He wants potential tenants to know that Link has their backs and can propel them to succeed if they choose to work hard together. And Emmanuel feels that the family business has matured in confidence to tackle international challenges. Every day, every hour is a new opportunity to share, grow and dream with the love and support of family by his side.
