Singaporean buyer CDL picks off London trophy which Blackstone first tried to sell three years ago for £500 mln.
City Developments Ltd’s chief executive said investors’ generally cautious approach to UK investing gave CDL ‘strategic opportunities to acquire prime assets in the UK’. It paid £395 mln for the 23-acre freehold waterfront site in the City next to the Tower of London.
It is one of a handful of large London office deals completing in Q1 2023 to overseas buyers; last month, Wirtgen Invest closed the acquisition of 50 Finsbury Square and ChinaChem bought One New Street Square.
Across Europe, deals are well down: after a very quiet January and February for German transactions, Savills said the rolling 12 month volume fell below €50 bn for the first time for nine years. Colliers said The Nordics has also had the lowest monthly transaction volumes since 2014 so far this year.
The busiest investors in 2023 seem to be debt funds, which continue to report high levels of demand, particularly to refinance bank loans. This week, Blackstone and Cheyne Capital each wrote £100m-plus bespoke packages for UK borrowers; Maslow Capital made its largest-ever loan, £258 mln for a prime London residential development.
Nuveen made the first loan for its latest, fourth, European debt strategy, and alternative lender Alantra said it is raising additional capital for its debt fund to close deals it has in its pipeline for the coming months and BentallGreenOak smashed the target for its latest fund, for UK lending.
We also track six new assets on the market including a student housing portfolio, logistics, office, retail and residential.
Five funds were announced or are raising more capital.
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