This Week's London Deal Sheet
The Deal Sheet is 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 mark.faithfull@bisnow.com.
AXA-backed Kadans Science Partner and Canary Wharf Group are developing a new innovation facility providing fully fitted laboratories and amenities for developing life sciences companies.
Kadans is converting levels four and five, totalling 38K SF, at the BREEAM Outstanding 20 Water Street into flexible, fully serviced CL2 wet labs, which can range in size from 200 SF to 5K SF, as well as office accommodation, ancillary meeting rooms and breakout space. Tenants will be able to occupy from a single lab bench to 5K SF.
Kadans and Canary Wharf recently announced that they had formed a joint venture to establish a new UK life sciences cluster at Canary Wharf. The process is running concurrently with the JV’s development of an 823K SF commercial health and life sciences-focused building, the largest in Europe, on the 3.3-hectare North Quay site at Canary Wharf, which is expected to be ready in 2026.
Fit-out has begun and it is expected that the innovation centre will be open in May 2023. The launch follows shortly after Canary Wharf’s recent announcement that a government-owned genomic health pioneer, Genomics England, is relocating its headquarters to One Canada Square.
ACQUISITIONS
Kadans has also bought Windrush Court in Oxford for £60M. The asset is to be acquired from Oxford Biomedica in a sale-leaseback transaction. Windrush Court is a 75K SF building that will be leased back in its entirety to Oxford Biomedica, which works across viral vector delivery systems providing solutions to cell and gene therapy biotechnology and biopharma companies.
The cluster is anchored by the University of Oxford.
With the acquisition of Windrush Court the Kadans portfolio now comprises over 50 buildings and projects under development in the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Belgium, France and Spain.
LEASING
The London BioScience Innovation Centre will open a new 37K SF innovation centre at The Apex, one of five mixed-use buildings within the Tribeca development in King’s Cross being delivered by Reef Group and Blackrock Alternatives.
The Apex, scheduled for completion in autumn 2023, will build on LBIC’s existing provision to offer additional high-tech lab facilities. Founded in 2000, LBIC is wholly owned by the Royal Veterinary College and LBIC, guaranteed by the RVC, and is taking a 25-year lease, which includes the part basement and ground, first and second floors of the seven-storey building.
Tribeca will feature circa 1M SF of workspace, laboratories and residential units across five buildings and will be part of the King’s Cross knowledge quarter, which includes more than 50 research institutions and organisations within life sciences, technology and the arts.
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Helical and Ashby Capital have let the sixth and seventh floors, comprising 38K SF of offices, at The JJ Mack Building, 33 Charterhouse Street, EC1 to Partners Group, a global private markets firm, for its new London office.
The JJ Mack Building was completed in September and comprises 200K SF of offices with 5.5K SF of ground-floor retail. The building is EPC A-rated and is anticipated to receive both a BREEAM Outstanding rating and a NABERS 5* assessment for energy in use, Helical and Ashby said. It includes three large roof terraces.
Helical and Ashby were advised by CBRE, Knight Frank and Clifford Chance, and Partners Group by JLL and HSF.
FINANCE
BWP REIT has begun trading on the Wholesale Market of IPSX, having raised £35M by way of a placing of ordinary shares. This marks the exchange’s third successful admission and the first UK real estate IPO in 2022.
BWP REIT is a newly established, externally managed, closed-ended investment company that owns the Bridgewater Place office building in Leeds. The property comprises 235K SF of commercial office space and 15.5K SF of retail units, with approximately 8% of the total floor area currently vacant.
The capital raised from the admission will primarily be used to carry out a repositioning of the property aimed at increasing the asset’s valuation and potential for rental growth.
BWP REIT's admission follows that of Mailbox REIT and M7 E-Warehouse REIT in 2021.
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UK property development company Godwin Developments has launched a nationwide build-to-rent platform. Working as an equity investor in partnership alongside an institutional real estate partner, Godwin has plans to build a portfolio valued in excess of £1B.
The joint venture will target both the single-family and multifamily BTR sectors and, in the near term, the JV partnership is aiming to develop its BTR proposition through the acquisition of both standing and forward-funded stock as well as by unlocking new land opportunities.
The Oxford-Cambridge Arc and the Home Counties will be key to expanding the delivery of single-family units for rent, and London, Bristol and Birmingham will be target cities for the multifamily offering.
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Volume housebuilder Weston Homes is to invest up to £500M in strategic land acquisitions over the coming five years, buying new homes sites across outer London and the south east to expand the company’s existing £2.13B portfolio of pipeline developments, which will deliver more than 7,500 new homes.
Weston Homes said that it will look to purchase sites that can deliver between 100 to 1,000 units on any individual site, brownfield or greenfield, and can be for sale with an existing planning consent or subject to planning. The housebuilder will focus on acquiring sites within a 10-15-minute walk of a railway station or public transport facility.
Weston Homes will be looking for sites in locations such as Bracknell, Barking, Watford, Hayes and Harlow, and commuter towns within 30 minutes of London including Reading, Stevenage, Borehamwood, Hitchin, Brentwood, Woking and Epping.
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Flexible workspace marketplace The Instant Group has invested in CoworkIntel, a flexible workspace data and analytics platform based in the U.S. and Spain. This creates the world’s largest data platform for the flexible workspace industry, covering 4,000 global markets, according to the companies.
SALES
The M&G Secured Property Income Fund is selling advertising giant WPP's offices at Dorland House in Paddington, west London, seeking in excess of £85M.
M&G restricted institutional investor redemptions from the £4.6B fund on 3 November and CBRE is advising on the Dorland House sale process, with the price sought reflecting a 4.55% net initial yield.
The 85.5K SF office is located on Westbourne Terrace and is single let to WPP until 2035 at a rent of £48.35 per SF.
The M&G Secured Property Income Fund invests in UK real estate for pension funds seeking long-term returns linked to inflation.
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Oil and gas giant Shell has withdrawn the sell-off of the real estate assets within its contributory pension fund, valued at up to £600M.
It is understood that Shell has decided to run the sell-off, which was being overseen via a number of different portfolio sales with different advisers, again in the new year in smaller lot sizes.
Within the portfolio, around £480M is UK freehold property, a little over £80M is long leasehold property with over 50 years unexpired, and £1.6M is short leasehold property.
DEVELOPMENT
Hines has expanded its joint venture with UK property investor and developer Clowes to develop a total of 1.15M SF of logistics space across the East Midlands.
The expanded joint venture will fund the development of warehousing across eight units and this initiative increases the initial commitment to deliver 772K of logistics space across four UK business parks, which was reached in September 2021.
195K SF has already been delivered by the JV at Dove Valley Park in South Derbyshire and the remaining units under development will be completed during 2023.
