UK Real Estate Grandees To Raise New £700M Fund
One of the best-known investors in UK real estate is raising a new fund looking to make high returns in the sector, the first time it has raised fresh capital in 15 years.
Delancey, which is run by Jamie Ritblat and Paul Goswell, is targeting a £700M equity raise for a fund called DV5, React News reported. It has already raised £175M from Abu Dhabi investment fund Mubadala, React said.
Ritblat is the son of Sir John Ritblat, former chief executive of British Land, and Delancey is one of the best-known investors in the UK. It pioneered the build-to-rent sector in the UK when it bought the Olympic Village in east London in 2011 alongside Qatari Diar and converted it into a huge rented residential scheme following the games.
It created the Get Living BTR platform off the back of the deal, which has since grown into an over £2B business whose backers include APG, Oxford Properties and Allianz.
Its other assets include Here East, the former Olympic broadcast centre, which was considered a games white elephant until Delancey turned it into a £500M office and innovation asset. More recently, it bought the Earls Court development site alongside APG, and is planning a major mixed-use scheme where the previous luxury residential development had stalled.
Delancey raised about £1B for its last fund, DV4, in 2007, just before the last financial crisis, and made hay buying distressed assets from banks, particularly Royal Bank of Scotland, as well as setting up Get Living.
That fund had a perpetual life, as does DV5. But over the last few years Delancey has been selling assets and returning cash to its investors, hence the new fundraising. An investment already made by the new fund is the conversion of an industrial estate on York Way near King’s Cross in London to a life sciences scheme.
Accounts for Cortx, the holding company for the manager of Delancey’s funds, said the company made a £5.4M pre-tax profit in the 12 months to 31 March 2021, from revenue of £24.8M.
