One of the UK’s foremost senior living developer and operators Audley Group could be sold.
The group’s main shareholders, private equity firm Moorfield and Danish pension fund PFA, have appointed Rothschild to advise on options for recapitalising the company.
According to sources, a sale would attract interest from large investors who would like to buy a platform to expand into this specialist sector across Europe.
Audley has a portfolio of 20 UK retirement village sites, developments and operating assets under the luxury Audley and midmarket Mayfield brands.
Moorfield and PFA have been investors since 2016 via the Moorfield Audley Real Estate Fund which raised £285 mln. The vehicle is also thought to include several other Nordic funds.
The shareholders have brought more cash into the business in the last few years via a series of joint ventures, including from Schroders Capital and Octopus Real Estate in 2019.
The trio established a joint venture in August that year to develop four retirement schemes with about 500 homes in total: in Cobham in Surrey, Stanbridge Earls in Romsey in Hampshire, Sunningdale in Berkshire and most recently last year, Scarcroft in Yorkshire. Schroders and Octopus invested via their UK Retirement Living Fund.
Then in May 2021, BlackRock Real Assets invested via a joint venture to provide the equity component of approximately £500 mln needed to develop and launch three Mayfield villages. The first, in Watford, is due to open this year.
The first Audley-branded community, 94 flats in Clapham called Nightingale Place, opened in 2020 and was developed in partnership with residential specialist Apache Capital. Audley also has a JV with Royal London.
Audley has also looked at developing retirement communities in Denmark in a JV signed with PFA in December 2019. Henrik Poulsen, global strategic relationships director at PFA, is a non-executive director on Audley’s board.
The business is led by chief executive Nick Sanderson and Moorfield’s founder Marc Gilbard is chairman. Its latest accounts, published in August 2021 for the 2020 full year, show it was still making an operating loss at that stage.
The group’s investors have had to ride out some bumpy periods, including the lockdowns in the UK during Covid.
However, many investors at Mipim earlier this month said that they are interested in pursuing retirement living, and M&A activity in this young, niche real estate sector is ramping up.
