5 Assets Up For Grabs After Fund Manager Collapses Owing £119M
Five assets, including a potential residential redevelopment joint venture with Greystar, are either being sold or could come to market following the administration of a UK fund manager.
A report from partners at FRP following the administration of BYM Capital last year said that some of the assets controlled by the group were already up for sale. Others are likely to be sold if a refinancing cannot be arranged, according to the report.
The assets include office-to-residential conversion schemes and the redevelopment of shopping centres to incorporate new rented residential units.
Bisnow revealed in November that BYM Capital had gone into administration. The investment and development manager founded by Ben Ditkovsky, Joseph Dunner and Matan Amitai had £700M in assets under management, according to its website.
FRP’s report says BYM’s directors decided to call in administrators after receiving a winding-up petition totalling more than £900K from creditors, including an accountant, a law firm and a lettings agent.
The company held stakes in special-purpose vehicles and joint ventures that owned individual assets and had their own debt facilities. Some of those are now in receivership.
One of the largest lenders to the group’s assets was Standard Bank of South Africa, which is owed just over £50M, according to a list of creditors. BYM’s creditors are owed £119M overall, including £45M owed to subsidiary companies.
Sales activity is already underway on some of the assets in receivership, FRP’s report says. They include Papermill House, a 148K SF office building in Uxbridge, north-west London, that was once the European headquarters of photocopying company Xerox. Papermill House is part of a three-building office campus bought by BYM in 2018 and was scheduled for conversion into 140 apartments.
A sales process is also in the works for the shares BYM holds in the SPV that owns the Treaty Centre in Hounslow, west London, where a joint venture had been formed with BTR giant Greystar for a 185K SF residential-led redevelopment of the shopping centre.
Other assets could be sold if a refinancing can’t be achieved. These include Astral Towers, a 119K SF office building in Crawley, to the south of London, where tenants include British Airways and Tesco. BYM has said the building has the potential for a change of use. An adjacent building not currently in administration or receivership could also be sold.
Also to be sold if a refinancing does not occur is Coopers Square, a 400K SF shopping centre in Burton, in the Midlands, bought for £23M by BYM in 2022.
The 360K SF Swan Walk in Horsham, West Sussex, is also in receivership, but FRP’s report does not outline whether it was earmarked for sale.
