"After a disastrous year in the financial markets in 2008, 2009 was the year of the aftermath," says CEO Gerard Groener. "Amid widespread corporate restructuring, Corio maintained a firm course and showed great resilience throughout the year. A major focus for us, as with all companies, was our balance sheet and the need to secure our own longer term funding at sustainable rates. Even for highly respected companies like Corio this was a challenge as the availability of funding in the market shrank to near zero and any financing that could be obtained came at a high price. Funding growth and securing redemption schemes took up a good deal of management time."

Like-for-like growth in net rental income for retail was 1.7%. It said its average occupancy rate for the total portfolio was 96.2% in 2009, down slight from 96.8%.

"The economic downturn led, in some areas, to greater discounting and longer idle periods for vacant space, which resulted in a slightly lower occupancy rate. This mainly affected our Spanish shopping centers. The average financial occupancy rate in France fell because of restructurings of a number of shopping centers," Corio says.