METRO PROPERTIES Turkey
Managing Direktor
Gündüz Bayer
MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO - GÜNDÜZ BAYER
Dear Colleagues,
Did you know that the total weight of the Corona virus which entirely changed our life worldwide is only 1 gram? This 1 gram caused the death of approximately 750. 000 people all over the World, because of this 1 gram the entire business world collapsed, hundred thousands of companies went bankrupt, financial markets collapsed, 100 million of people got unemployed, countries closed their borders, people were not allowed to go out of their homes. This 1 gram also restored the ozone layer, kept 1 billion ton of petrol in the tanks, cleaned up %75 of air pollution, made us rethink the way we used to live? This 1 gram of virus facilitated upcoming changes in all areas of business and daily life in a way we never faced before…
I was never imagining such effects of the virus when I was flying back from Shanghai mid of January. Happy that I had cancelled my planned trip to Wuhan, I went to the doctor the next day of my arrival in Istanbul for a Corona test as I was planning a trip to India in 3 days. Naive as I am, I was thinking that everybody was exaggerating the situation and everything would get back to normal in a couple of weeks…Nevertheless the opposite happened!
First we started working from home. Afterwards we had to close our Shopping Centers in Adana, Gaziantep, Konya and Istanbul Beylikduzu except the hypermarkets for the first time in 20 years. Next shock was the curfew. We had to stay home for days. What the hell was going on? How dangerous was this virus really? It was invisible but still everywhere? How to protect family, friends, colleagues and business? How long would this nightmare take?
After a short period the law of nature that human beings can adapt to all circumstances stepped in and we started living the “new normal” and get used and even felt comfortable in certain ways to our new life.
Safety was the priority but nevertheless business had to go on.
Our colleagues operating our Centers in the front managed to run the partially open M1 Centers in a safe and effective way. Furthermore they used the time to make some maintenance works and prepare our centers for the post Corona days.
Nesrin Ozkan immediately implemented a marketing strategy to keep the contact with our loyal customers through social media and prepared a relaunch strategy.
The leasing team, Muammer Cene and Tahsin Eren, were all the time in close contact with our tenants to understand their needs and future plans. Keeping our tenants alive was our most priority. In the meantime the colleagues were able to lease out a 10 000 sqm store in Bursa which was amazing in times when everybody was working from home!
The headquarter in Istanbul was functioning perfectly with great IT support from Goksel Atikeler and Mehmet Ataolur. Ergun Soylemez was our Joker as always, supporting the entire team as the only person in the office and acting as the contact with banks, service providers and the team.
The Development team of Evrenos Sengonul was working on several projects and they were able to realize two important strategical moves in our Kozyatagi and Kartal 222 projects.
Martin Wetjen and his team were able to keep accounting and controlling functioning without any disruption. The colleagues around Osman Kocak and Goksel Atikeler were able to reduce the utility costs in the centers by more than %50 during the closure and %25 after reopening.
Deniz Tolunay our legal counsel supported all departments from morning to late hours at night. New regulations were introduced on a daily basis and her one lady team had to follow up all developments. Furthermore she supported together with Goksel Atikeler MCC in their rent negotiations with third parties. Elvan Dumlu from the HR Team did great work in keeping up the spirits of the team and taking care of all kind of individual requests.
Working from home needed definitively some adaption but the colleagues showed once more how rational, focused, flexible and creative they are and that everybody can rely on his colleague.
Many thanks to the entire team to keep business ongoing normal in such abnormal times…!
The weight of the change the virus will bring will be definitively more than 1 gram but past months showed that we all are ready to take this challenge. We gathered a lot of experience and are currently preparing our organization to go “Back To The Future!”.
August 2020