UPP completes £115m deal with the University of Nottingham

University Partnerships Programme (UPP) said on Tuesday that it has closed a £115 mln (EUR 127 mln) transaction with the University of Nottingham.

The deal was financed by a consortium of Barclays, RBS and the Bank of Scotland, which has worked with UPP on a number of previous schemes.

UPP has committed to investing in and refurbishing 850 student rooms at the university's Broadgate Park campus. Under the agreement, UPP has extended its long-term partnership with the University by an additional 10 years for a revised concession period of 45 years. UPP's partnership with the University of Nottingham began in 2003.

The agreement follows UPP's recent £133 mln transaction with the University of Exeter, backed by Barclays and RBS, which closed in September 2009.

'Following this transaction, UPP has successfully drawn almost a quarter of a billion pounds of new private investment into the Higher Education sector in less than six weeks,' said Sean O’Shea, CEO of UPP. 'This provides an example of how the UPP model can help institutions release funds in both the short and long term which can in turn be used to fund core activities.'

Mark Quigley, director of Structured Property Finance at Barclays, said: 'During the past couple of months, Barclays - UPP's main funder for over a decade now - has provided senior debt facilities of almost £100 mln for two transactions'. He also noted that Barclays' appetite for funding schemes of this nature 'remains undiminished', in line with the lender's target 'to remain the market leading provider of student accommodation finance.'