Eagle Street Partners To Complete €130M Deal For The Square
A deal for shopping centre The Square in Tallaght has been reached for a reported €130M, just over half the €250M paid in 2018 when it was acquired from the National Asset Management Agency by previous owner Oaktree — but above figures being circulated earlier this year.
The acquisition of the 578K SF scheme by Eagle Street Partners comes around two months after the company was selected as the preferred bidder. The sale was prompted by the retail complex being put into receivership.
The deal includes control of 118 of The Square’s 160 store units, plus a 13-screen cinema and more than 2,400 car spaces, with the scheme anchored by Dunnes Stores and Tesco. Penneys also opened a large store in the centre in 2022. Owners of the independently owned units at the centre were not impacted by the receivership.
The sale is expected to close within days, and senior lender Allied Irish Banks will be the main beneficiary of the sale process, being run by accountants Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richardson of Interpath Advisory. They were appointed by AIB as joint receivers and managers with the consent and cooperation of Oaktree Capital Management in May.
The shopping centre was Ireland’s largest mall when it first opened in 1990, and the move to push through a sale by AIB came after Oaktree put The Square on the market last year with a €170M price tag but didn't find a buyer.
Oaktree’s 2018 purchase was backed by AIB as the senior lender, with additional lending coming from M&G Investments. Prior to the Oaktree sale, NAMA had acquired and amalgamated various borrowers’ interests to execute a single large-scale disposal.
Oaktree had paid NAMA €250M for 90% of the centre, which had planning permission to extend the site and was potentially suitable for the addition of a residential component.
However, like fellow U.S. investment giant Blackstone, which bought the Blanchardstown Centre for €950M in 2016, Oaktree has fallen foul of falling retail asset prices. It had previously been in exclusive talks earlier this year to sell the asset to Hines for a price believed to be in the region of €125M.
Reports suggested that while AIB and Oaktree were prepared to sell at the discounted value, M&G Investments was less happy, and in the end, the process to sell the centre to Hines fell apart.
