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TWST: What is UNITE Group Plc?Mr. Allan: UNITE is the UK's largest student landlord. As of today, we operate a little over 26,000 bedrooms across the UK, occupied entirely by students. We build and develop all of our own student accommodation as well as owning those accommodations once completed and operating them - providing a full management service. So we're a vertically integrated business in that sense. In addition to the 26,000 bedrooms that we're operating as of today, we have a pipeline of around another 7,000 to 8,000 bedrooms that are in the course of construction, and we'll open around about 5,000 new bedrooms for each academic year; academic years in the UK begin in September each year. So we will open a further 5,000 beds for the September 2005 academic year taking our operational total of beds to around 31,000. The business was founded in 1991 by our Chief Executive, Nick Porter. Initially UNITE was a small, property developer based in Bristol in the UK, and started undertaking very small scale developments of residential flats, which in time came to be leased to the local university, the University of the West of England. Quality University accommodation is in short supply in the UK, and over a period of time, Nick developed a relationship with that particular university to start signing agreements for the development of new student accommodation exclusively within Bristol. Over a number of years, the group developed about six or seven properties, totaling around 1,000 bedrooms for that university. The business listed on AIM, the junior market in London, in June 1999, and stepped up to the main Stock Exchange list in April 2000. So it has been a fully listed PLC since that date. We've been a regular issuer of equity. From 1999 through to 2002, we raised equity each year. In 2001, our largest equity raising of 86 million pounds was used primarily to fund the acquisition of a competitor called UniLodge that was based predominantly in the north of England and in Scotland, which fitted very well with the geographic spread of the UNITE portfolio at that time, which was predominantly based in the south of the country. So this acquisition gave the business a level of national coverage, which had never previously been achieved. We are the largest student landlord, and our most similar competitors tend to be regional operators who operate anywhere between 3,000 and 6,000 bedrooms. So you can get a feel for the size of UNITE relative to other competitors in the marketplace.
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