Telereal Trillium

Telereal Trillium Ltd is a commercial property management and investment company, headquartered in central London. The ordinary shares are held by the B Pears Trust and William Pears Group EBT, the preference shares are held by The William Pears Group and the William Pears Group EBT. Telereal Trillium had a £3.2 billion contract to manage buildings such as job centres for the Department for Work and Pensions. It also managed property used by the DVLA.

While the company paid full UK corporation tax last year, it funnelled £163 million of its post-tax profits in the form of share dividends into a parent company based in the British Virgin Islands where there is a zero rate of income and corporation tax. Since 2010, the Trillium group has given £673 million in share payments to its offshore owner.

2012’s financial accounts reveal that the company has links to a secretive arrangement of shell companies, the very structure that David Cameron has described as ‘shadowy’ and has vowed to eradicate.

Trillium was formed in 1997, to acquire the 1,500,000 square metres (16,000,000 sq ft) property portfolio of the Department for Work and Pensions, which it did in 1998. Acquired by Land Securities in 2000, the company was renamed Land Securities Trillium.

In 2000, the 50/50 joint-venture company Telereal was established with William Pears Ltd, to acquire the property portfolio of British Telecom for £2.1Bn. Trillium itself bought the property portfolio of the BBC in the same year. In 2002, Telereal began managing the property portfolios of O2 and Airwave. In 2004 Trillum signed property management agreements with Norwich Union and Barclays Bank. After William Pears bought the remaining 50% interest in Telereal in 2005, Trillium completed the purchase of the property portfolio of the DVLA under a 20-year deal.

In 2008, Trillium signed deals to manage the property portfolio's of the Royal Mail and Birmingham City Council. It then bought the project management division of AMEC, and then bought the office and branch properties of the Royal Bank of Scotland in partnership with the Prudential plc Investment Management.