HSBC Alternative Investments (HAIL) has invested £224.1m in a Scottish shopping centre and retail park on behalf of its so-called ’club deal programme’.

Land Securities sold The Centre, in Livingston alongside the Almondvale West retail park. Hines will asset manage the investments, which total one million sqft, for HAIL.

The deal is HAIL’s third with Hines.

Paul Forshaw, head of real estate fund management at HAIL, said the purchase gives clients access to “significant real estate investment opportunities that might otherwise be inaccessible, or too large, for individual investors to acquire or manage on their own”.

The transaction follows HAIL and Hines’ 72.8% stake purchase of Ireland’s Liffey Valley Shopping Centre in February this year, and the purchase of Broadgate Quarter in the City of London in 2012.

Assets have also been bought in Washington DC, New York and London.

The centre, Scotland’s second-largest covered shopping centre, is fully-let to 160 retailers.

For Land Securities, the sale is part of a move towards dominant regional retail and greater London assets, said Scott Parsons, managing director of retail.

The UK real estate investment trust (REIT) paid Lend Lease £656m (€818m) for a stake in Kent retail asset Bluewater in June this year.

Land Securities is moving away from assets that it deems have future income risks and towards long-term, sustainable income, analysts at JP Morgan observed.

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