Ares To Invest £800M In Quintain’s Wembley Park
Funds managed by U.S. private equity firm Ares are poised to pour £800M into the giant Wembley Park build-to-rent project being constructed and managed by Quintain.
Ares is in the process of completing a preferred equity deal that would see it invest the money in Wembley Park at a return of about 12%, React News reported. The capital would come from Ares’ debt funds and, potentially, its real estate funds.
Private equity firm Lone Star owns Quintain. Lone Star has spent £2.8B taking the company private and building 4,000 homes at Wembley Park. The new capital from Ares gives Quintain the ability to build out the remaining 2,500 homes at the north London scheme and gives Lone Star a way to pay down debt in the fund that owns Quintain and debt secured against the project.
Lone Star has tried to sell Quintain before, but a deal for Get Living to buy the scheme for £2.25B in 2018 fell apart when the two sides could not agree on price. In the past six months, Quintain has sold two blocks at Wembley Park for more than £300M combined. It put another block on the market, but React reported that sales of individual blocks are likely to stop.
Lone Star and Quintain will likely revisit the sale of Wembley as a whole once the scheme is fully built and leased.
Hear from the CEOs of Quintain and Get Living at Bisnow’s Build-to-Rent Annual Conference on 11 and 12 June. Sign up here.
