Signs Of Mounting Distress Emerge As £700M Investment Manager Goes Into Administration
Some of the first signs of significant distress in UK real estate are appearing in the development sector.
Bisnow can reveal that partners from FRP have been appointed administrators to BYM Capital, which bought several offices and shopping centres for redevelopment in the past few years.
The administration comes hot on the heels of the receivership of Roots In The Sky, a 430K SF office scheme being developed by Fabrix.
When property markets turn, developments and developers are often the first to face problems because schemes under construction don’t have income to pay interest or can’t be sold in time to pay back debt.
The development sector has been hit hard by the rise in construction costs over the past two years as well as the rise in interest rates since the middle of 2022.
BYM Capital, an investment and development manager founded by Ben Ditkovsky, Joseph Dunner and Matan Amitai, states on its website that it has £700M in assets under management.
FRP’s Philip Watkins and Geoff Carton-Kelly were appointed joint administrators of BYM on 19 October, a spokesperson for FRP told Bisnow.
“BYM Capital Limited holds seven wholly owned subsidiaries and six of these companies’ assets are subject to LPA Receiverships and one administration where FRP are appointed administrators,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
FRP said the assets held in the special-purpose vehicles of BYM Capital Ltd. are:
- Permitted Developments Investments No.6 Ltd., an SPV that exclusively applies to Papermill House in Uxbridge.
- Permitted Development Investments No.7 Ltd., an SPV that exclusively applies to a development site in Uxbridge.
- BYM Burton 1, an SPV that exclusively applies to a shopping centre.
Six assets are listed in relation to a loan from a secured lender to BYM Capital Ltd. in which the underlying secured assets sit in SPVs. Those are Astral Towers in Crawley, Swan Walk Shopping Centre in Horsham, Magnolia Centre in Exmouth, The Pavilion Centre in Tonbridge, Waitrose & Retail in Dorchester and retail units in Northampton.
BYM Capital Limited has retained a small team of dedicated asset managers and analysts, FRP stated, adding that it is now focused on realising the company’s assets for the benefit of creditors.
BYM did not respond to emailed enquiries for this story.
Papermill House is a 148K SF office building in Uxbridge, north west London, that was once the European HQ of photocopying company Xerox. It is part of a three-building office campus bought by BYM in 2018 and was scheduled for conversion into 140 apartments.
Astral Towers is a 119K SF office building in Crawley, to the south of London, where tenants include British Airways and Tesco. BYM has said it has the potential for a change of use.
The Burton SPV relates to 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, and the 50K SF Pavilion Centre in Tonbridge, Kent, were acquired in 2021. In both cases, BYM said there was potential for change of use.
