The Chairman of the Executive Board Bruno Keller

What are ANF’s strengths in the current economic climate? ANF occupies a unique position in the city centres of France’s two biggest provincial cities: Lyons and Marseilles. This city centre location gives ANF the lion’s share of commercial leases in cities with strong potential and a diverse range of tenants, making ANF’s rental income especially resilient in the face of any eventual drop in consumption. In addition, the portfolio of 161 hotel properties acquired from the B&B Group provides it with a very secure cashfl ow stream owing to the long-term leases and fi xed but indexed rental payments. Furthermore, ANF is not exposed to any speculative building projects. Lastly, ANF’s low indebtedness is certainly a strength in the current environment.

 How did you arrive at your appraised value at 31 December 2008?

As every year, we had two appraisers, Jones Lang LaSalle and Atisreal, who assessed the whole of ANF’s property estate.

Owing to the current economic climate, the capitalisation rates used by the appraisers were raised 50 bp to 60 bp on average.

The value of ANF’s property estate rose to €1,544 million at 31 December 2008 despite this increase, which shows that the work done to enhance the portfolio exceeded the negative effect from this rate increase.

This work is expected to continue for years to come.

 How do you assess your financial structure?

ANF is currently one of the least indebted property companies with a loan to value (LTV) of 24% at 31 December 2008. From the outset, its lines of credit were negotiated under particularly favourable terms, enabling ANF to honour its fi rm commitments to undertake new development projects.

None of these lines will be renegotiated before 2014.

Thus, ANF’s financial position is now particularly sound, so that it can seize opportunities which may arise in today’s economic climate.

 Does the present crisis have an impact on your development projects?

One of the characteristics of ANF’s developments is that they are spread out over time from 2008 to 2014.

Those projects which must be delivered in the short term are secured by the currently available line of credit.

Our rule is to not begin developing a new project until it is fully secured, i.e. when the end-tenant is found and financing is obtained. We think this rule is especially well-suited to the current environment.

 Don’t you think you have too many office developments in Marseilles, given the other office schemes to be completed over the next few years there?

We are going to develop about 45,000 sq. m of new offices in Marseilles by 2012.

Marseilles still looks very attractive. The average rental price in Marseille is around €200 to €250 per sq. m, well below the European average for comparable cities. Hence, there is still room for quality new office space, given that the majority of our projects will be delivered by 2013, or before the other big office developments in Marseilles are delivered.