Vast, glob­al law firms, with up­wards of 1000 part­ners and thou­sands of staff in cit­ies around the world, have been a fea­ture of the leg­al scene for years. After

DAC 7: on­line plat­forms, key play­ers-to-be in the European tax trans­par­ency frame­work?

Who dares wins: European M&A 2020

European deal­mak­ing down­cast, but dis­tressed op­por­tun­it­ies emer­ging

From pan­dem­ic to pur­pose  As we wel­comed in a new year, the de­fin­ing is­sue of the next dec­ade looked set to be sus­tain­ab­il­ity. The rise of ESG – En­vir­on­ment, So­cial, Gov­ernance – was no flash in the pan; it was now a guid­ing prin­ciple for glob­al in­vestors and in­sti­tu­tions. Re­spond­ing to the cli­mate crisis was a pri­or­ity. And then COV­ID-19 changed everything.   Few would have pre­dicted quite how quickly the world would be turned up­side down by a glob­al pan­dem­ic, the like of which has not been seen for a cen­tury or more. The hu­man cost and in­di­vidu­al tra­gedies have been in­des­crib­able. The eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pact un­pre­ced­en­ted. Cit­ies have be­come ghost towns. Mil­lions are work­ing from home, not of­fices. Re­tail, leis­ure and travel sec­tors have been par­tic­u­larly hard hit. And yet, in some ways, the events of 2020 have ac­cel­er­ated changes that were already gath­er­ing mo­mentum. For the real es­tate sec­tor there is now an op­por­tun­ity to re­set. For the first time, our re­search this year polls not only over 240 lead­ers across the real es­tate sec­tor, but over 1,500 seni­or of­fice oc­cu­pi­ers with de­cision mak­ing re­spons­ib­il­ity for prop­erty is­sues, and over 500 glob­al in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors. It takes a de­tailed look at mar­ket re­ac­tion to the pan­dem­ic and the last­ing im­pact it could have on the of­fice as­set class and the way in which we will ad­apt to our new work­ing en­vir­on­ment. We will also ex­plore real es­tate’s jour­ney from pan­dem­ic to pur­pose, as sus­tain­ab­il­ity and so­cial im­pact set the agenda for the sec­tor. This is our eighth an­nu­al re­port where we look to the fu­ture, ad­dress key is­sues fa­cing the real es­tate sec­tor and ex­plore mar­ket trends. We hope you en­joy read­ing it.