Jack Cotton was born on 1 January 1903 in Birmingham, and was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Birmingham, and at Cheltenham College. He left school at the age of 18 to become an articled clerk in a firm of estate agents and surveyors. In 1924, he set up his own firm in Birmingham.\n', '

By the 1930s, he was buying farmland to sell to speculative builders of housing estates. In 1932 he began the first of his purely urban developments, starting with blocks of flats and moving on to commercial property. In 1937, he built King Edward House on the site of his old school, which was rebuilt in Edgbaston close to the University of Birmingham. Other office blocks in the centre of Birmingham followed.\n', '

During World War II, he realised that there would be a huge demand for new buildings after the war. He moved to London, and bought a property company called Mansion House Chambers Ltd., which he then merged with another company called Chesham House (Regent Street) Ltd., the name of which was changed in 1955 to City Centre Properties. He persuaded the Pearl and the Legal and General Insurance Companies to become partners in his ventures. Barclays Bank joined in his overseas operations. In 1960 City Centre Properties merged with two other big property companies, "City and Central" and "Murrayfield", to create the biggest property company in the world.\n', '

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