Leading a busier week for investment sales were two London offices, a CEE retail portfolio, a Dusseldorf landmark and a Spanish hotel.
Malaysian investor Gamuda Berhad with private equity firm Castleforge said it expected to double its equity within a five-year hold after agreeing to buy Winchester House on the City of London’s London Wall for £257 mln. Tenant Deutsche Bank is moving out next year and the buyers intend to increase the floorspace by 60% and relet it. CIC and Invesco put the property up for sale last year hoping for £270-£300 mln.
The second London office transaction was UK pension scheme insurer PIC’s £268 mln forward purchase of Two Ruskin Square (pictured), a green building being developed and fully pre-let to the UK government on a 25-year, index-linked lease, and located in London's Croydon suburb.
Trei Real Estate sold a €250 mln portfolio of 70 Czech and Slovak retail parks and supermarkets, while Brookfield made a profitable €180 mln divestment of one of a portfolio of hotels that it picked up in the midst of Covid. In Dusseldorf, US real estate company Jamestown, acting for an unnamed investor, acquired 40 buildings spanning 125,000 m2 for €156 mln.
One other notable large deal was Landsec agreeing a price to buy out two debt holders in separate transactions which owned 50% of Cardiff’s St David’s shopping centre. The UK REIT paid a meaningful discount to the £113 mln September 2022 valuation for the 50% share it didn’t already own, with the price equivalent to a 9.7% yield. At some 1.4 mln ft2, the prime shopping centre represents one third of the entire centre of Wales’ capital city. Landsec also bought the adjacent, vacant Debenhams department store for a ‘minimal sum.’
A further six shopping centres came to market this week, in Dublin, Portugal and in regional UK cities. The Irish press reported that Invesco is quietly marketing the Frascati centre in Dublin’s Blackrock suburb while UK Mars Pension Fund is offloading four secondary schemes totalling 1.8 million ft2.
We also track the latest new loans and two funds raising.
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