The administrators of troubled UK retail REIT Intu, which entered insolvency proceedings two months ago, have put trophy asset The Trafford Centre on the market.
The retail property, located in Manchester, UK, is considered the second biggest shopping centre in the country with around 280 stores across 185,000 m2 of retail space.
It was last valued publicly by Intu at £1.7 bn (€1.4 bn), but sources suggest its price tag will be slashed by at least 20% to around £1.3 bn in order to achieve a sale.
The sale is to be brokered by CBRE and investment bank PJT Partners, the latter of which has been advising the Trafford Centre's biggest creditor, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).
Intu's joint administrators said in a statement: 'All parties are working constructively together to maximise value for this highly attractive asset.'
Financial services firm KPMG was appointed as Intu's administrator towards the end of June, after the troubled landlord failed to stave off breaches of its debt commitments. This after collecting just 29% of rents for the second quarter, compared to 77% in 2019.
At the time, Jim Tucker, partner at KPMG and joint administrator, said: 'Intu owns many of the UK’s biggest and best-known shopping centres. The challenges affecting UK retail are well known and have been exacerbated by the impact of Covid-19 and the resulting lockdown.'
Intu owns and operates a total of 17 shopping centres across the UK including Intu Lakeside, Intu Merry Hill and Intu MetroCentre, in addition to a shopping centre and development site in Spain, which the firm's JV partner, Eurofund, is trying to buy out. The centres have continued to trade throughout insolvency proceedings.
Intu did manage to complete the sale of Puerto Venecia to Generali and Union Investment in May for €475 mln, but the deals were not enough to avoid financial collapse.
