The Wellcome Trust has bought marina operator Premier Marinas from the BlackRock UK Property Fund.
The deal comes five months after it emerged that BlackRock’s £2.9bn (€3.7bn) balanced fund was looking to sell the business through Lazard.
The decision to sell the alternative asset was made after a review of the fund’s exposure to a range of asset classes and in light of the fund’s weighting constraints.
The marinas business, which includes 300,000 sqft of rental property, accounted for around 7% of the fund’s net asset value.
Paul Tebbit, director at BlackRock, said PML had generated “strong returns” for BlackRock over the past decade.
BlackRock invested in the eight-asset marinas business in 2005 as a diversifier away from mainstream real estate.
In late 2012, the firm merged the UK Property Fund with RREEF’s UK retail, office and industrial property funds.
For the Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation, the purchase has been made for the long term.
Peter Pereira Gray, managing director of the trust’s investment division, said the deal adds a third wholly-owned UK asset-backed operating business to its investment portfolio.
”We will take a long-term approach to the ownership of the business and look forward to the continued success and growth of PML.”
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