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Christian Ulbrich, president and CEO of the commercial real estate giant JLL, said Wednesday that turmoil in the Middle East is slowing down long-term investments in the region and “feeds” into interest rates.
“Investing into real estate and taking long-term decisions on signing large leases, people need to have visibility,” Ulbrich said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC. “And with these numerous crises we have to deal with, … that is just creating a lack of visibility.”
He continued: “When you drive your car and it’s foggy, you slow down because you can’t see that well. And so that’s a little bit [of] what we see. People are just going on the brakes, and they want to have a little bit more visibility before they take long-term decisions.”
Ulbrich, who noted that JLL has a large footprint in the Middle East, emphasized that his first concern is for his employees’ safety as the US and Israel strike Iran — and as Tehran fires missiles and drones at neighboring US allies.
He also said the damage done to regional energy infrastructure is linked to interest rates, though he hopes the war would end soon and limit the scope of the impact.
“Energy prices have moved up significantly,” he said. “We will see elevated energy prices for quite some time, and that obviously feeds into inflation — and that feeds into interest rates.”
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Ulbrich’s comments on interest rates echo an interview he did with Semafor’s The CEO Signal earlier this month.
“Our business is very correlated to GDP and interest rates, and when you have geopolitical turmoil it has an impact potentially on interest rates,” he said then.
On Wednesday, he noted that JLL’s business also benefits from clients needing the company’s expertise in navigating these types of crises.
“Sometimes the more noise and uncertainty that’s out there in the world, that is not necessarily bad for us as a company. Because that provides the need for advice,” he said.