Sir Sadiq Khan is set to attend the “world’s leading real estate event” on the French Riviera. The BBC reports that the mayor will in March join the annual MIPIM conference at Cannes. Previous mayors Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone were both regular attendees at the four-day event, but Sir Sadiq has never gone before - and has instead tended to send one of his deputies.
The conference offers the chance to network with some of the world’s biggest property developers and to discuss investment opportunities in London and other global cities. City Hall said it had no comment on the BBC’s report. Sir Sadiq joining the event for the first time could however be read as a demonstration of his commitment to the Labour Government’s agenda of “kickstarting economic growth”, with ministers placing a strong focus on house-building to unlock that growth.
Last year’s MIPIM conference was attended by Jules Pipe, London’s deputy mayor for planning and regeneration, where he accepted almost £550 in speaking fees at various dinners. According to his register of gifts and hospitality, the deputy mayor received about £243 for speaking at two dinners hosted by the business lobbying group BusinessLDN, and then received a further £300 for speaking at a dinner hosted by the Berkeley Group, a major British developer.
MIPIM stands for Le Marché International des Professionnels de l'immobilier, or The International Market for Real Estate Professionals. Speaking at the conference in 2014, the then-Mayor of London Mr Johnson joked that MIPIM could in fact be short for ‘May I push you in the Med?’ or ‘Meet me in the pool in a minute?’, given the amount of lobbying that takes place there. He declared however that, to his mind, it stands for ‘Making important property investments for millions of Londoners on modest incomes’.
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