M&G celebrates 150th birthday with record deal volume

M&G Real Estate has marked its 150th anniversary by posting a record deal volume over the last 12 months.

The UK fund manager, formerly known as Aviva Investors, is a specialist investor in all major property sectors across the globe with more than £15 bn (€18.2 bn) of assets.

The company marked the start of its 150th anniversary by announcing that it has completed or committed to £3.5 bn worth of deals in the past 12 months. This total includes over £2.5 bn of acquisitions across 123 individual assets mainly in UK commercial real estate, but increasingly in UK residential and international property.

Alex Jeffrey, chief executive of M&G Real Estate, said the record-breaking year is attributable to M&G Real Estate's ability to deploy capital from Prudential and third-party institutions as a deal counterparty. Some 70% of all 2013 deals were conducted off-market.

M&G Real Estate's largest transaction was the acquisition in October 2013 of Bankside 2 & 3 and the retail holdings of Bankside 1 in London's Southbank from UK REIT Land Securities. The investment volume of £315 mln (€371 mln) represented an initial yield of 5.2%

Other significant transactions included three Tesco superstores, 18 British Car Auctions sites and, in a pioneering move back into the UK residential sector, 401 market rented units at Stratford Halo and a portfolio of 534 homes acquired from Berkeley Group.

M&G Real Estate has also conducted several swap deals - with Hermes (Guildford Friary Centre), SWIP and the BP Pensions Fund - and partnered with a leading Asian institution.