This Week's London Deal Sheet
A weekly compilation of Greater London and beyond's biggest leases, sales, financing deals, construction updates and personnel moves. Have news you’d like to submit? Email mike.phillips@bisnow.com.
Henley Investment Management has completed a series of leasing deals at its newly launched Bloom business park at Heathrow, near London.
Henley has let an additional 64K SF of office space to McDermott, the provider of engineering and construction solutions to the energy industry. The transaction is one of the largest in the south east office market this year and takes McDermott’s office footprint at Bloom from 44K SF to 108K SF.
Nomad Foods, the frozen food company, has also extended its 36K SF lease at Bloom, taking total leasing transactions at the park to 145K SF.
Bloom, formerly New Square, Bedfont Lakes, is undergoing an extensive programme of upgrades to provide grade-A, sustainability and wellness-focused office accommodation. Bloom is run by 100% renewable energy with rooftop solar panels set to be added during the renovations. Colmore Capital is supporting on the asset management of the park, which has been masterplanned by Gillespies. The newly refurbished buildings will target a BREEAM rating of Excellent and WiredScore accreditation.
FINANCE
ASK Partners and OakNorth Bank have provided a £44.5M senior development and acquisition loan to privately owned property development company Sheen Lane Developments to fund the acquisition and refurbishment of a former department store.
The acquired half-acre site, located in Richmond in west London, is a freehold 61K SF former House of Fraser department store that includes further adjacent retail space, making a total of 76K SF. Acquired with vacant possession, the site has planning consent in place for extensive refurbishment to create a mixed-use retail and office development.
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Private equity firm Round Hill Capital has set up a joint venture with specialist developer Olympian Homes to forward fund build-to-rent developments across the UK. The first scheme in the JV will be a £165M, 488-unit development in Manchester, which will be delivered on a fixed-price contract.
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Tungsten Properties, the UK industrial and warehouse developer, has signed a transformative joint venture funding agreement with BC Partners, the private equity firm, providing access to leveraged capital to fund development opportunity acquisitions.
The newly formed joint venture company will invest up to £250M to target single and multi-let industrial opportunities across the UK, which will range from last-mile to big-box logistics warehouses with a gross development value of more than £25M. Tungsten Properties will act as asset and development manager for the joint venture.
LEASES
The Crown Estate has partnered with Lone Design Club, the independent designer concept store, to launch a pop-up focused on sustainable fashion.
Located on Regent Street, the Conscious Edit store will bring together industry leaders, changemakers and a range of sustainability-conscious independent fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands. It is designed to showcase the innovation happening within the industry and some of the small steps that can be taken toward a more sustainable lifestyle.
Alongside the collections and pieces for sale, visitors will be able to rent items of clothing with Rotaro and bring their pre-loved items of clothing to be repaired and upcycled in store with Sojo.
SALES
LaSalle Investment Management and Trilogy Real Estate are in talks to buy a pair of office buildings totalling 133K SF at 41-71 Commercial Road on the eastern edge of the City of London for more than £50M, CoStar reported.
The buildings are occupied and being sold by LocatED, a government property agency, and are being marketed by Cushman & Wakefield as having the potential for refurbishment or redevelopment into office, hotel/serviced apartments, residential/co-living, life sciences, education/research or last-mile logistics.
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Prologis has bought two distribution centres totalling 330K SF, one in Croydon in south London, the other in Erith in Kent, south east England. It paid £140M for the assets.
The Croydon asset is leased to Royal Mail, while the Erith asset is leased to Ocado.
Erith was acquired from a UK fund, whilst Croydon was acquired from a segregated mandate client of CTI Real Estate. Prologis was advised by JLL on Erith and Knight Frank on Croydon. Gerald Eve and Acre Capital advised the vendors.
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Home REIT has acquired 199 properties located across England for an aggregate purchase price of £85M. The listed company funds the acquisition and creation of high-quality properties across the UK that are dedicated to providing accommodation to homeless people.
These acquisitions were funded by net proceeds raised via the company’s oversubscribed £263M equity issue in May 2022. The company has now deployed a total of £170M (66%) of the proceeds of the placing.
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London-listed investor CLS holdings has announced it is buying back £25M of its shares because it feels the discount to net asset value at which the company trades is too big. It said it did not plan to make any acquisitions in the second half of the year but could make disposals, and would use the proceeds to pay down debt and possibly buy back further shares.
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The BBC has put the famous Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire up for sale for about £70M. The studios are the external set for soap opera Eastenders and Strictly Come Dancing is also filmed there. The BBC is likely to lease out some or all of the site following the sale. Lambert Smith Hampton is the selling agent.
