CBRE’s European debt broking and advisory team has won retainers from three fund managers, including sister company CBRE Global Investors, to give financing advice.
The CBRE GI mandate was awarded earlier this year after the investment adviser went out to four debt advisory firms requesting proposals.
Since then, CBRE debt & structured finance has arranged three loans for CBRE GI’s flagship open-ended pan-European fund.
The largest is a €135 mln facility for the fund’s purchase of a prime mixed-use asset in Milan, Piazza Duomo 25. Natixis provided a seven-year, fixed-rate loan secured on the asset which is currently let to H&M.
CBRE debt & structured finance also arranged loans with Canada Life in April, for two of the CBRE GI fund’s London assets. One, of £79 mln (€90 mln), is for Angel Central, a 150,000 ft2 (c15,000 m2) shopping and leisure centre, and the other, of £40 mln (€45.5 mln), finances Mutual House, on Regent Street. Both were also fixed-rate, and for seven years.
Steve Williamson (pictured), head of the debt and structured finance team, said the two other new fund manager client mandates were a UK manager and a continental Europe-focused business.
'Savills, at their Financing Property’ presentation last week, said there are over 200 active lenders', Williamson said. 'With so many and such complex sources now, investors are wondering how one person in treasury can deal with it. The trend seems to be to outsource some of this work.
'There must be an argument to say there is more reason to use an adviser now. Investors are saying to their managers: ‘are you getting the best advice and are you sourcing the best debt?’'.
Williamson said his team was mandated to raise at least £1 bn of debt in Europe. Other closings to date include raising €125 mln of, initially, wholly-speculative development finance from Deutsche Bank for Kennedy Wilson’s Capital Dock scheme in Dublin’s docklands. Since the finance was raised, Kennedy Wilson has sold one office to JPMorgan for the US bank’s new, post-Brexit Irish headquarters.
