Two West End specialists are testing investor appetite for large deals, by putting over £600 mln (€700 mln) of assets up for sale.
The largest package involves 27 properties owned by Sam Tak Lee’s Langham Estate. He has instructed JLL and Savills to seek a reported price of £500 mln - a more ambitious volume than anything else seen so far in London this year.
Meanwhile Shaftesbury Capital, formed by the merger earlier this year of Shaftesbury and Capital & Counties, this week appointed CBRE to seek a buyer for 28 leisure and restaurant, retail and office properties plus 56 flats in Fitzrovia. Last valued at £118 mln, like the Langham Estate portfolio the properties are located north of Oxford Street in the West End while the bulk of Shaftesbury Capital's assets are south of Oxford Street. CEO Ian Hawksworth said the Fitzrovia portfolio did not meet the group’s investment criteria.
As in last week’s round-up of notable deals closed during July, today’s data sheet covering August’s is also light on large transactions. Biggest by far was X+bricks’ agreement to sell 188 grocery-anchored properties across Germany to Slate Asset Management for approximately €1 bn.
Slate already owns more than 220 properties in Germany. The deal will complete in two tranches when the US-based company said it will be one of the leading owners and operators of daily needs retail real estate in Germany.
Another cross-border investor, Singapore's CapitaLand, was busy in August, splashing out £215 mln to buy London hotel The Cavendish plus £125 mln on a north London data centre.
The big German open-ended funds have been quiet this year, but Union Investment made a big commitment in Milan, paying €200 mln to Qatar Investment Authority for a prime CBD office building.
Over the summer, three fund managers - Brookfield, Carlyle and Hines - raised more capital for their latest funds focused on value add and opportunistic deals as they work towards final closes.
We also track 11 new loans, the majority of them refinancings including Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt owned by Korea’s Samsung SRA advised by Patrizia, where a club of three banks stepped in to refinance a former ING loan maturing this year. Samsung had attempted unsuccessfully to sell the tower last year.
Both banks and alternative lenders continue to be busy. Aukera Real Estate’s debt fund has closed loans totalling more than €300 mln in the last few weeks.
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