Ron Spinney, as chief executive and then chairman of Hammerson, was a popular figure in the City who gained a reputation as a modernising force within both the company and the property sector as a whole.

A steely yet charismatic industry grandee, he held key positions, including acting as president of the British Property Federation and a Crown Estate Commissioner. He helped to lead the sector into a new era of corporate governance as he turned around the fortunes of Hammerson, a company which has invested in, developed and managed real estate.

Under his leadership the group, which had already pioneered Britain’s first covered shopping centre, Brent Cross, in the 1970s, developed the Bullring in Birmingham and WestQuay in Southampton, as well as growing its lucrative French portfolio.

The postwar property giant, founded by Lewis Hammerson in 1953, had been built up by Sydney Mason, who took over after Hammerson’s death in 1958. Mason, a larger-than-life figure, was preoccupied with expanding its sprawling empire and protecting the Hammerson family’s money.

In contrast, Spinney was a new breed of industry leader — an unpretentious, straight-talking moderniser. He was well briefed on contemporary management thinking and focused on running the company on behalf of all shareholders.

He was appointed chief executive in 1993 at a time when the industry was recovering from a prolonged global downturn. On taking over, he discovered that Hammerson was not in good shape, so he set about restructuring the group to focus on geographical areas where it had critical mass and changing the mix of properties in its porfolio.

Spinney recalled in an interview: “When I joined, I don’t think the sun ever set on the Hammerson empire. It stretched from Calgary to Australia.”

He cut the company’s geographical presence from nine countries to just three — the UK, France and, to a lesser extent, Germany. Recognising that there was an increasing demand for property, he also accelerated the company’s underactive development programme, investing in office sites such as the IRA-ravaged 99 Bishopsgate.

He radically changed the portfolio mix, reducing its exposure to offices and increasing investment in retail and shopping centres from 40 per cent to 70 per cent. Only four of 80 properties in the portfolio predated him by the time he left.

As a result of the portfolio rebalancing divestments, there were substantial job losses. However, Spinney earned respect internally as a firm but fair leader, even though he could at times be extremely forceful. Honest and straightforward, he had very high standards and expected those around him to match them.

He also set about revamping the board, reducing the number of directors, and overhauled the company’s split-voting structure which allowed one class of shares to hold far greater voting power.

At the vanguard of corporate governance, he embraced transparency at a time when the reporting by some companies in the industry could at best be described as a little mysterious.