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.
Cain International has completed a £500M purpose-built student accommodation forward-funding deal for delivery of 2,389 beds across major UK university cities. All five schemes have already secured planning consent.
The transaction sees Israeli insurance group Menora Mivtachim invest in Cain’s existing UK PBSA platform with developer Fusio, alongside the addition of new development partner Olympian Homes. The transaction marks Menora’s first direct investment into a UK PBSA strategy.
With Olympian, Cain will deliver two new PBSA schemes. In Leeds, the 255K SF, 45-storey Cirrus Point will provide 660 beds, making it the tallest PBSA building in the world and the tallest building in Leeds. It is due for completion in 2026.
In York, completed in time for the 2025-26 academic year, Rialto House will provide 275 beds.
Cain will deliver three more schemes in Liverpool, Nottingham and Manchester with Fusion. In Liverpool, the partners are delivering 420 beds across a mix of room types in time for the 2025-26 academic year.
In Nottingham, the scheme is expected to be complete by Q3 2025 for a nine-storey asset in multiple connected blocks, consisting of 552 student rooms. In Deansgate, Manchester, Cain and Fusion will deliver 509 student beds in a 28-storey building for the 2026-27 academic year.
Financing was provided by an affiliate of Apollo Global Management.
DEALS
Singapore-headquartered private equity firm Q Investment Partners and Hurlington Capital have formed a joint venture to develop a PBSA site in Woolwich with a gross development value of about £80M.
Work on the site is due to commence in Q1 2024, with anticipated completion in time for the 2026-27 academic year. It will be QIP’s ninth asset in the UK.
Representing QIP’s entrance into the London PBSA market, the site at 81-88 Beresford St. was acquired by Hurlington Capital in 2020 and is part of the multibillion-pound regeneration of the former Royal Arsenal.
With planning consent secured in August 2022, it is the first PBSA scheme in the regeneration area and will deliver 298 beds through a 50-50 mix of studios and cluster rooms.
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Tristan Capital Partners’ CCP 5 Fund and Bricks Group have acquired a 457-bed PBSA asset in Salford for £68M, the fifth asset in the joint venture’s portfolio. The acquisition represents another step in the joint venture’s plan to establish a £750M-plus platform in the UK PBSA market, the companies said.
Established in 2021, the joint venture now controls 2,571 student beds across five assets in Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham and Salford.
Catering to students from both the University of Manchester and University of Salford, the new 14-storey Salford Two development opens this month.
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Kennedy Wilson has acquired two industrial warehouse assets in the UK totalling about 181.5K SF via separate transactions.
Situated 18 miles north-east of central London, the single-let unit at Westside Business Park comprises 76K SF and is fully let to GXO Logistics. The asset is adjacent to Kennedy Wilson’s existing Spire Green Industrial Estate, bringing Kennedy Wilson’s footprint in Harlow to 12.5 acres.
The second acquisition comprises a roughly 105.5K SF industrial unit at Moulton Park, an established industrial location in Northampton, with nearby tenants including Toolstation, Screwfix and UPS. The asset is fully let to Great Bear Distribution.
Kennedy Wilson was advised by Gerald Eve on the acquisition of Westside Business Park, Harlow, and by DTRE on Moulton Park.
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Rented retirement homes specialist Birchgrove has purchased a 78-apartment development in Hampton Court, the eighth site in its portfolio across the south-east of England.
The £39M deal to acquire the site has been completed with Octagon Developments, which will deliver the apartments on a turnkey basis by 2025.
This is Birchgrove’s eighth development with equity partner Bridges Fund Management and follows the sale of its first two neighbourhoods to M&G last year. The debt is provided by Beaufort Capital in its fourth deal with Birchgrove. The project’s gross development value is forecast to increase to £68M once all units are fully let, the company said.
Located in the Hampton Court Estate, the development will provide 78 self-contained, assisted living apartments available to renters aged over 65, together with communal facilities and landscaped gardens.
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A private Middle Eastern investor advised by Allsop has completed the £20M off-market purchase of The Stables, Britannia Street, a period office building close to King’s Cross station, at a net initial yield of 6%.
A former stable building arranged over four storeys, the property has undergone extensive refurbishment works to provide EPC B rated office accommodation for about 18K SF.
Eighty percent of its income comes from one tenant, a venture capital firm with 10 years remaining on its lease.
SALES
British Land and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Norges, are understood to have appointed agent CBRE to investigate the £750M sale of the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield.
It is understood CBRE will start marketing Meadowhall soon although British Land has denied the reports, according to a report in The Times.
If a deal at around £750M was agreed, it would represent one of the largest shopping centre deals over the past decade, and it would equate to a net initial yield of around 7.5%.
LEASING
Stanhope and Mitsubishi Estate London have signed law firm Proskauer and engineering software company Bentley Systems for a total of 70K SF at 8 Bishopsgate.
The 560K SF building was completed in July and offers 75K SF of amenity space, including a 200-seat auditorium, cafés, restaurants and meeting rooms.
Previously, around 75K SF had been leased, with law firm HFW having taken 60K SF and insurance sector company Atrium leasing just under 15K SF.
