Helical Bar sells London office property at 10% premium

Helical Bar has sold the London headquarters of Network Rail to an overseas buyer for £43 mln (€58 mln), representing a 10% premium to the book value of the asset.

The purchase price for Enterprise House in the Paddington district also represents a net initial yield of 4.04%. The proceeds will be used to repay £30 mln of debt with the balance retained for new investment, London-listed Helical Bar said in a statement.

The buyer was not identified.

Helical Bar originally acquired the 4,180 m2 Art Deco office property in a 20-year sale-and-leaseback transaction with Network Rail, owner and manager of the UK's railway infrastructure, in 2013. The asset was comprehensively refurbished by Network Rail in the same year.

'This disposal enables us to capitalise on the strong London market, freeing up capital to deploy into our other London opportunities which will benefit from Helical’s expertise in extracting latent value through development, refurbishment and asset management,' Duncan Walker, Helical Bar’s investment director, said.