Support of Lowy family puts OneMarket in the fast lane

In true tech style, Steven Lowy discarded his tie for yesterday’s OneMarket investor briefing in Sydney.

Steven Lowy at the OneMarket’s investor briefing in Sydney yesterday. Picture: Hollie Adams.

It’s a sign of the times when global shopping centre landlord Westfield and its founding Lowy family turn their focus to a technology company.

In true tech style, Steven Lowy discarded his tie for yesterday’s OneMarket investor briefing in Sydney, where he outlined hopes for Westfield’s retail-focused technology platform that will be spun out and separately listed if a critical shareholders’ vote goes its way later this month.

Early in his presentation, Steven Lowy, who will chair the venture, made it clear that OneMarket was a technology start-up, not a real estate company. And that it carried a higher risk.

Its future is dependent on Westfield shareholders who are expected to vote yes on May 24 to the $30 billion takeover offer for Westfield by French property giant Unibail-Rodamco, to be followed by a vote on the OneMarket demerger.

Retail, once a money spinner for business and landlords, has been hit by fast-changing consumer demands, online shopping and tighter wallets in an era of low wages growth. In Australia and overseas the sector has been littered with struggling and failed retailers, also threatening the income of shopping centre landlords.

In his day job as co-chief executive of Westfield Corporation, Lowy has previously picked the increasing pace of change as one of the biggest challenges and this was echoed yesterday by OneMarket’s chief executive, veteran technology executive Don Kingsborough.

Traditional retailers were spending up to 85 per cent of their IT budgets on keeping legacy systems running and lacked the ability to implement fast change. Kingsborough compared this with Amazon, which poured $15bn into innovation in 2016.

The pitch was about OneMarket’s technology linking retailers, landlords and their customers to provide an edge. It was about turning the challenges for retail into an opportunity and hopefully making a profit from it.

With enough cash to last till the end of 2019 and the Lowys’ vast retailer contact network, the start-up has a better chance than most.