Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today I am very pleased to say is Harry Hyman, Founder and CEO of Primary Health Properties, a UK real estate investment trust and leading investor in modern primary healthcare premises and lots more too. Working at a property investment firm in the 1990s, Harry, a trained accountant and Cambridge graduate, had a realisation. Due to the aging and rising population, GPs needed larger medical centres that the NHS couldn’t easily fund. Harry felt that if a specialist private landlord could give the GPs the modern sites they needed, it would take some pressure off hospitals and give that landlord in return steady, eventually growing rental income. In 1994 Harry founded Primary Health Properties or PHP and floated it on the Stock Exchange two years later while dealing with a cancer diagnosis and treatment. Now in the FTSE 250, PHP is the largest private owner of primary accommodation in the UK and Ireland, with assets of over £2.8 billion across 513 sites. It’s lovely to have you here, tell me about this business that you created all those years ago.
Harry Hyman
Sure, well it’s a very straightforward concept, we develop and buy and hold for the long-term, medical centres which have changed and have become much larger, out of which a whole raft of primary care procedures are delivered. So not just GPs but the other ancillary services like physiotherapy, social prescribing, outpatient consultations and our average lot size now is around five and a half million which is quite a considerable size for a building. So my first memory of a GP was sitting in the guy’s front room in Stanmore, having the polio vaccine and I think he was a single-handed GP and perhaps his wife was the nurse or receptionist and that’s how it was and unfortunately, all over the country, too many of our facilities are still in that old style general practice and the increased healthcare demands mean that there’s a hell of a lot more that can be delivered in the primary care centre but that needs modern purpose-built accommodation. And that’s our bag. That’s what we do and we take that requirement for capital away from the NHS, away from the GPs and facilitate the modernisation of primary care, which is perhaps the way to radically change the NHS as we move into the later parts of the 21st century.
Elliot Moss
Is it coincidence that you are a qualified accountant I believe, is that right?
Harry Hyman
It is right, yes.
Elliot Moss
Good, I’m just checking. So far so good. Qualified accountant, you’ve been involved in investment in all sorts of different things and here we are talking about something which is incredibly important, is about the wellness of human beings, is that coincidence that Harry Hyman is doing that or is it something bigger?
Harry Hyman
You’re right, you put your finger on it. I think when I was ill in 1995, I had non-Hodgkins lymphoma and thank goodness, here I am, 28 years later. It kind of meant that I was more interested in financing assets with a social impact rather than just assets for assets sake or property for property’s sake and I think that if you can be doing something for the good of humanity, the good of the British population, also making some money out of it for my shareholders and stakeholders, that’s not a bad thing to do. I think that really did change my life in a number of different ways and it gave me a new perspective and a drive to get things done.
Elliot Moss
And until that point, had you been happily going about your business doing well in various different roles and not really thinking about anything beyond that. And I don’t mean that in crude way, we all do that, you know we all talk about our own corner of life but was that the one thing or do you think looking back into when you were younger, there were other values imparted on you that meant actually, Harry Hyman was going to be more interested in money and beyond money impact.
Harry Hyman
I came from an immigrant background, second generation migrants from Belarus. Thank goodness they left because they wouldn’t be around now for lots of different reasons. I went to a school that recognised and rewarded success and gave one a lot of impetus and drive and I also worked for a very aggressive and demanding financier in the ‘80s and ‘90s so I think striving and doing well has always been there in the gene pool and I am delighted to have been able to harness that to modernise primary care within the NHS. So it’s been a, it’s been a journey and one that I’ve enjoyed.
Elliot Moss
Looking now at the portfolio and what you’ve created, what does that feel like when you go into these places which are fit for purpose?
Harry Hyman
Well it’s great but I think it’s not just me, I’ve got a wonderful team of 65 people who help with the acquisitions. There was a time when I’d been to every single building, sadly I haven’t been to all 513, probably about 413, but I’m working on it and I like to see the buildings being used and believe you me, they’re busy, dealing with the everyday needs of the expanding population, the aging population and sadly, a population with an ever higher instance of chronic disease like type 2 diabetes or musculoskeletal problems or cardiovascular disease and all this puts a massive strain on the healthcare system and you know it’s very important to realise that sort of sitting here in London we have a rather a cocooned view of British society. Investment in healthcare is a terribly important part of the levelling up agenda. People in worse-off parts of the country have a huge requirement for healthcare and you know, the less economically well off you are, sadly the more things you have wrong with you because of diet, depression, mental health issues, all of which can come from not having enough work and being from a less well-off background, so this agenda is incredibly important and investing in those parts of the country is doubly important.
Elliot Moss
Just going back, and I think that must be right, of course it’s right, there’s a question I want to talk about with regard to sort of industrial strategy and the lack of it and the way that obviously healthcare and the provision of the facilities around healthcare are absolutely critical and I want to ask you about that in a little bit but just going back to when you were ill and you said it had a really big impact on you. Of course cancer strikes in a very different way and it isn’t necessarily, I don’t know if there’s a correlation between wealth and cancer, I doubt there is, it’s so widespread, when that happened to you, you know many people talk about recovering from cancer and people go off and doing extraordinary things in their lives, why did you focus on the relationship with healthcare, out of interest?
Harry Hyman
Well, I didn’t pick it, I was already doing a little bit of it but it really changed my outlook, my world outlook. When somebody tells you, you have cancer and they don’t tell you what the percentages are but I discovered later when I was in remission that it was 50:50, it kind of means life is not a rehearsal, you have to get on with it and perhaps to some extent I’ve become a bit more of a risk-taker.
Elliot Moss
I was going to ask about because accountants generally, Harry, you know aren’t, and they protect us, right, lawyers protect us, we don’t want them to be risk-takers.
Harry Hyman
No, I come from an incredibly traditional background, after university, qualified at Price Waterhouse, wonderful place to learn, not a place that encouraged in those days, risk-taking but yeah I think it really did change my world outlook – sounds a bit bizarre – but when you’ve had this brush with death, which thankfully has not come back, in part thanks to the wonderful medical team at the Marsden, and my surgeon, consultant, Dr Cunningham, you just realise that this is not, it’s not a 9 to 5 thing and let’s live tomorrow like it was today, you have to seize the opportunity and if you see something, why not go for it.
Elliot Moss
And do you feel that every day, still?
Harry Hyman
Most days, yeah. And I think you have to make the difference and you have to have an urge to get on and do things, you know, and follow up. Quite often I get frustrated when other members of my team don’t quite follow up with quite the same vigour as I still feel that they should be following up and I maybe that’s a societal thing and a generational thing but you know the sort of ‘whatever’ attitude is no good, if see something and I want something done, I’m going to ask for it to be done, politely, but with determination.
Elliot Moss
I think it’s really simple, if everyone followed up, we’d all be happy.
Harry Hyman
Well, some people wouldn’t be happy.
Elliot Moss
They wouldn’t, that’s true. Some people, the last thing they want to do is follow up, that’s a fair point. Stay with me for much more from my guest, Harry Hyman. We’ll be following up with him in a couple of minutes but right now we’re going to hear a clip from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions, they can be found on all of the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Tom Grogan of MDRxTECH fame talks about Web 3.0, the next iteration of the internet and what businesses and individuals need to be thinking about when formulating their strategies and pursuing valuable, impactful projects.
All our former Business Shapers are available for your delectation on the Jazz Shapers podcast and of course you can hear this very programme again with today’s guest, Harry Hyman, Founder and CEO of Primary Health Properties, a UK real estate investment trust and leading investor in modern primary healthcare premises. There’s more to it than that and I touched on it earlier. You’ve got the property business but I’ve read about the other parts of the, of what you offer. Just talk about those two things as well, I’d be very interested to hear a bit more about them.
Harry Hyman
Sure, well I think you’re talking about International Opera Awards and the associated foundations. So, one of my passions in life is opera, I just think it combines the best of music and theatre and costume and voice and it can move you to tears or move you to laughter, it’s an amazing genre and it, boy does it need help and the young people struggling to make their careers need a lot of help. It may be fine if you’re from a middle class, well-off background where the bank of mum and dad can step up to the plate but for mainly young people who are not from that background, that period after music college, when they’re establishing their career, can be terribly difficult, so I came up with the idea of perhaps having a set of bursaries to give out to people, from around the world, not just singers, but in any aspect of opera, and we run the awards annually in order to generate the funds to provide the bursaries and last year, we had our first non-UK award ceremony at the Teatro Real in Madrid, which was absolute fabulous and we gave out something like £75,000 worth of bursaries to people involved in opera, and opera is a whole industry. When you sit in your seats and see the curtain go back, perhaps you don’t realise there are costume makers, wig makers, people who train the singers, people who train the chorus, musicians, a conductor, scenery designers, lighting, it’s just a whole panoply of people, maybe 300 involved in each performance and it’s an amazing thing. It’s got a slightly elitist feel about it, which I think is quite unfair because almost every opera company in the world has an outreach programme and a programme for younger opera goers who can get very discounted tickets and I think opera just should be made available to everyone, and in a way musicals are a 20th, 21st century version of opera.
Elliot Moss
What I find interesting, Harry, is you know reading about you and meeting you now, there’s this intellect and the rational part of Harry and that does extraordinary things, he knows how to raise finance, he knows how to float businesses, manage huge amounts of assets. There’s the man that’s affected by being ill and the emotional impact that had on you, and then there’s this creative piece and often in humans, we’re some of those things but not all of them, we’re all complicated. Is the creative piece the outlet, is that the, I don’t mean the real Harry but is that when Harry’s really at his happiest?
Harry Hyman
Well I do look on projects that I managed to bring off, you know we did a merger in Primary Health Properties with a similar competitor called MedicX in 2019, it was an £800 million merger, all-share merger, and I must say that I was enormously happy once we done it because we’d been trying to do it, on and off, more off than on, for maybe nine or ten years and the moment became right and we had to seize that opportunity and get the deal over the line and we worked very hard to achieve that, so that was a financial deal but it needed a bit of creativity in order to get it done.
Elliot Moss
But the creativity bit when you’re inside of the opera and it’s great that you’re doing those things and, as you said, the industry, that industry, it needs help. But I’m interested in your reaction when you’re actually in the opera and you said it’s emotional, is that the outlet or is that the release from the very complicated, if you think it’s complicated, and the very serious nature of business?
Harry Hyman
Yeah, I think it is a release, I’m not a psychologist but I think I’m quite easily moved to tears or laughter and I think that’s a wonderful emotion. In fact I listened to a wonderful speaker, Elif Shafak, the novelist, who said at a gathering, ‘We live in an age of angst’ and believe you me, I think that’s true, we’re all on our mobile phones, there’s digital media everywhere, it’s non-stop, 24-hours a day and she said something quite profound I think, she said that the antidote to angst, is culture and I thought about that and I thought do you know, that’s exactly right, you can read a brilliant book, one of hers, you could see a brilliant film, you could listen to a wonderful piece of music, wonderful piece of jazz even, you can go to the opera and it can really help you overcome the day to day stressors and take you out of your normal mind and put your mind into another dimension, a sort of nirvana. And what’s also interesting is that it cuts across class and social distinctions. People can watch a play, they can watch a film, they can go to the opera, in my view, and they can have those emotions, you don’t have to have been to Cambridge, you don’t have to have been to school even to be moved by a piece of great art or music and I think that’s a great phrase, you know, that culture is the antidote to angst and maybe we should all take a moment every day to think about that.
Elliot Moss
What a lovely way to put it. Family is part of your working life as well, your son is the Founder of, I think it’s called Knife and Fork Media, they own The Good Food Guide. What’s it like working with family for you, Harry?
Harry Hyman
Has its moments. Any father-son would tell you that. Adam is his own man. I’m very proud of him.
Elliot Moss
How old is he, sorry, is he?
Harry Hyman
Adam is 37 and he takes the business in the way that he takes it forward and I’m very happy to support him as a shareholder but it’s his business.
Elliot Moss
So you’re no Logan Roy? There’s no whiff of Succession over there?
Harry Hyman
Err, I’m pleased to say that I’m not Logan Roy.
Elliot Moss
You don’t seem like Logan Roy. For those of you who don’t know who Logan Roy is, just go online and have a look, it maybe some of you haven’t been watching it earlier this year. But is it difficult for all the usual reasons, which is it’s your son and sometimes those conversations which would be more objective become slightly subjective and…
Harry Hyman
Yeah, I think family, the bonds are very strong and there’s always a, I feel as a parent, you’re always a parent and you want to do well but you have to realise that life moves on and a lot of his customers in CODE as well as in The Good Food Guide are from a completely different generation from me and he’s got a much better handle on what they want.
Elliot Moss
And CODE very briefly, if you just describe CODE.
Harry Hyman
CODE is an app for people that work in hospitality, so it’s a affinity group and it enables the wonderful people that work in hospitality who work very hard for very little money, to get something back from other people in hospitality by way of some discounted offers at restaurants but only available for people that work in hospitality. But he has about 30,000 that are signed up to that.
Elliot Moss
Okay, so it’s pretty significant. And just to throw another thing into the mix, I think you have an investment business as well.
Harry Hyman
I do. And that invests in early stage businesses and that’s a very interesting thing because I want to help people at the early stages of their career and I think that’s a stage you get to in your life where you want to be an investor, you want to perhaps use your experience of issues that have to be overcome and give them some help, not just financial but intellectual as well, so you help them on their journey.
Elliot Moss
There’s a lot of pieces here, Harry, I mean you have the main property business, you have the investment piece, you have the CODE app and then you’ve also got The Good Food Guide and all the Knife and Fork Media and stuff. Lots of moving pieces, lots of people, what’s Harry Hyman’s leadership approach? How does he manage the volume and the complexity of that?
Harry Hyman
Well I’m very pleased to say that I’ve got great colonels in charge of each part, so it would be ridiculous for me to try and do it all and I’ve got fantastic management teams in each of the different parts of my life and what I like to focus myself on now, is the strategic direction and perhaps helping them to overcome issues that I’ve come across which make it a bit tricky but which, you know with the benefit of age, you might have seen them before. It’s like people are very worried about the current economic situation but believe you me, this is a walk in the park compared to the global financial crisis that we had in 2008. Now that’s not to belittle what’s happening now and it’s quite terrible, the rise in interest rates but actually, this is all overcomeable I think, whereas in the global financial crisis, the banks were bust.
Elliot Moss
How do you keep the perspective? Is it simply you’ve seen these things in different guises, is that it? Or is there something where you almost talk to yourself and say, ‘Harry, the time now is to be calm’.
Harry Hyman
Well you’ve put your finger on a very good phrase. At the time of the Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng government, my team were charging into the office going “What on earth are we going to do now?” and I was sort of saying to them, the first thing we’re going to do is nothing, let’s just wait and see what happens, we don’t need to panic, just stay calm, there’s nothing wrong with the business, you know, our cashflow is ultra secure, the properties are 100% let, there’s demand for the use of the properties, thank goodness our interest rates are hedged out for quite some time to come and so, sometimes in your life you think that actually doing nothing is perhaps the best thing to do rather than feeling you have to do something.
Elliot Moss
You heard it here first, probably not first actually because doing nothing is indeed a very smart thing to do in many, many times and it is Harry Hyman’s advice right now, if you’re facing a particular difficulty, at least assess where you’re at. Final chat coming up with him and we’ve also got a Cannonball Adderley classic, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Harry Hyman is my high energy Business Shaper today, we’ve been talking about all sorts of stuff. What we haven’t, I haven’t asked you and it was just, just occurred to me when you were talking before, you talk about the importance of perspective and to be calm and to do nothing, do you ever get flustered?
Harry Hyman
Very, very occasionally. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t get flustered.
Elliot Moss
And what flusters you?
Harry Hyman
I think I can get frustrated when things don’t work or when things don’t get done on time but it’s a good time to take a deep breath and maybe listen or think about a piece of music and it soon puts it into perspective.
Elliot Moss
I thought for a moment you were going to send me to some sort of hypnotic trance, ‘Now, Elliot, I can see you might get flustered. You’ve just got to relax’. In terms of strategy and you mention your role as you now see it, things are going to change for you, you are stepping down I think next year as CEO. What does it look like ahead from that now? What are you thinking about? How are you going to shape what Harry Hyman does going forward post that moment?
Harry Hyman
Yeah, well the time has come for me to step down as CEO after 27 or 28 years. It’s quite hard work, it’s not that I want to stop doing what I’m doing but I think it’s time for someone with a bit more fire and vigour to be leading the team forward but I’m hoping to stay involved in some sort of capacity because it is very much my, a baby, and it will be a process of me learning to step back a bit from that and giving the new person the space in which to drive the ship forward.
Elliot Moss
Do you think you’re still open to the same levels of risk post that moment we discussed when you were unwell and you said you know what, carpe diem, got to grab the day, seize the day?
Harry Hyman
Yeah, I think I am actually. I like taking risk financially. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t but of course it’s got to be proportionate to your circumstances and we rarely take a risk with my PHP hat on because our shareholders want consistency of income and consistency of performance, so maybe that’s why I have all these other outlets for my vim and vigour, so I can take the risk in those.
Elliot Moss
And are you going to be able to relax, Harry, do you think? I mean I know that, as you said, you’re not stopping, there’ll be a whole other next chapter of Harry Hyman but are you good at relaxing, are you good at switching off?
Harry Hyman
If you ask anyone else, they’ll say no but I…
Elliot Moss
I figured that you would say that.
Harry Hyman
I’m going to say that I can.
Elliot Moss
If you’re forced to.
Harry Hyman
Believe it or not, I find crosswords very relaxing, so I’m a cruciverbalist, I think that’s the right description for it, but I also love going to the opera, so I probably go two or three times a week, which is crazy but that’s what I do and I love it and I like, I also like my wine collection, not too much.
Elliot Moss
I’ve heard you have many bottles.
Harry Hyman
Yeah, quite a few.
Elliot Moss
Is that, the thing I’ve never asked a wine collector is, obviously you must enjoy drinking it but are you keeping them until they’re ready or are you keeping them to sell or I mean, is there a bit of everything?
Harry Hyman
I think it’s a bit of everything. My late father was an amazing stamp collector so, I think in a way, PHP even is a stamp collecting business, we like collecting the assets, we’ve probably only ever sold twenty, ever, in the 28 years, so we might need to do a bit more capital rotation there but I think wines are like that, you know I’ve got this particular maker or I haven’t got that year, I must fill in the collection and maybe I’ll have a bottle or two out of the twelve that you might buy but I think it’s a bit addictive. So, I think I can relax but other people would tell you that I can’t.
Elliot Moss
I know whose version I believe, Harry, I hate to say, I’ve got a good feeling where the truth lies. It’s been great talking to you, thank you for your time and good luck with this year, good luck with next year, I’m sure it will be fabulous and enjoyable for you, you look like you know what you’re doing.
Harry Hyman
Really enjoyed it, thank you so much.
Elliot Moss
Absolute pleasure. And just before I let you disappear into the sunset, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Harry Hyman
So, it’s by a wonderful musician, a saxophonist, Benny Carter, A Walkin’ Thing. The record was released late in his life, in 1978, and I can remember the person who introduced me to the record and I can remember listening to it, on vinyl, for the first time when I was at university and I just think it’s a wonderful track and it also features another of my favourite musicians, Milt Jackson on vibes.
Elliot Moss
That was Benny Carter with A Walkin’ Thing, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Harry Hyman. He talked about follow-up with vigour, just do things, if you’re asked to do them, please do them, it makes life much easier and it makes business work. He talked about Elif Shafak’s quote, ‘The antidote to angst, is culture’, what a lovely way of putting it. And finally, he said a really important thing, in the face of adversity, in the face of things happening around you that you’re not sure about, do nothing. Your first instinct is probably to do something and he says do nothing. I think that’s great advice. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.