George Iacobescu: the man who transformed London

George Iacobescu, the man who – quite literally – put Canary Wharf on the map, is stepping back from his executive role. He will be a tough act to follow, says Jane Lewis

George Iacobescu
(Image credit: © Shutterstock)

George Iacobescu was in his early forties when his boss, Paul Reichmann, founder of the Canadian developer Olympia & York, sent him to London to investigate the possibility of building in the city’s Docklands. It was 1986, the year of Big Bang, and the area had been designated an enterprise zone by Margaret Thatcher. Iacobescu walked from his hotel in Mayfair, along the river to Canary Wharf, says The Sunday Times. What he found made him think of The Long Good Friday – the gangster movie starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren. “I saw 500 years of history along the Embankment and then I arrived here and there was nothingness,” he relates. “I went back and said: ‘Don’t touch it’.”

An architectural revolution

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.