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.
Feldberg Capital has acquired 21-25 Bedford Street in the West End for about £75M for its ReForm Fund, focused on brown-to-green workplaces.
Feldberg launched the ReForm impact fund in October and in December acquired 8 Bloomsbury Street, a circa 34K SF building close to Tottenham Court Road underground station, which is undergoing a retrofit. The fund typically invests in energy-inefficient offices and retrofits and repositions assets, targeting locations such as Covent Garden, Soho, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury.
The 21-25 Bedford building will see sustainability upgrades including the removal of gas boilers, the installation of air-source and water-source heat pumps and the installation of on-site solar panels.
ReForm received backing from a cornerstone UK institutional investor in October, followed by a second close in December, and has a fundraising target of £300M, which will provide firepower of around £500M including leverage, the company said.
“This acquisition continues to support our thesis that we are seeing a once-in-a-cycle opportunity to invest in Central London’s best commercial real estate assets at very attractive values,” Feldberg Director Robert Allen-Mersh said in a statement.
DEALS
Round Hill Capital has sold its Nido Living business to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, having owned the business for 12 years.
As part of the transaction, Round Hill Capital is also divesting its stake in the student accommodation joint venture between the two companies, which comprises more than 5,000 beds across 15 European assets.
“Since acquiring Nido in 2012, the business has gone from strength to strength, starting from three assets in the UK to managing over 18,000 student beds across the UK and Europe in this period, as well as diversifying into new territories,” Round Hill Capital CEO and founder Michael Bickford said in a statement.
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CBRE has advised FPC Electric Land, a specialist investor in grid-connected land, on the purchase of a £150M freehold battery energy storage system at Uskmouth Power Station in Newport, south Wales.
The investment will see the delivery of a 230-megawatt BESS facility on the 9-acre, former coal stocking site of the decommissioned Uskmouth Power Station. The vendor and tenant have secured an additional capacity of 120 MW, which will trigger a pro rata rental increase once the additional capacity is made available at the site.
It is the first section of the former Uskmouth Power Station to be developed for BESS usage, with further projects and capacity in various stages of development. Upon completion, the development will have a gross development value of circa £150M, according to the companies.
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CBRE UK Affordable Housing Fund, sponsored by CBRE Investment Management, has committed capital to acquire and develop 522 affordable rental homes through forward-funding and forward-commitment transactions in the last 12 months, the company said.
These include funding 294 regulated rent homes at Wood Wharf, part of the Canary Wharf Group residential development; delivering 67 regulated rent and 11 shared ownership homes across two sites in Exning, Newmarket and Weston, Spalding; providing 54 regulated rent and 18 shared ownership homes in Burgess Hill, Sussex; adding 14 regulated rent and 14 shared ownership homes at Fugglestone, Salisbury, to an existing portfolio of 185 homes; and adding 48 regulated rent and two shared ownership units at Wellington Gate, Wantage.
As of the fourth quarter, equity commitments totaled £670.5M from 22 investors, of which nine are Local Government Pension Scheme subscribers.
FINANCE
Aviva Investors has completed an investment to provide financing for the development of the new Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, Wales, made on behalf of Aviva UK Life.
The new Velindre Cancer Centre will be located on a 7.8-hectare site and will replace the existing treatment facility, which was built in 1956 and provides specialist cancer services to more than 1.7 million people in south-east Wales.
The scheme will target a BREEAM Excellent rating and is designed to use all-electric solutions and air-source heat pump infrastructure, supporting low energy demand and low operational carbon. The full-service commencement date is expected to be 2027.
LEASING
AXA IM Alts reports London office scheme 22 Bishopsgate is 95% let following the signing of two new leases totalling circa 34K SF to global enterprise automation software company UiPath and a London-based service provider.
Following six deals and circa 112K SF of lettings signed over the past year, there is now around 70K SF remaining to be let.
U.S.-headquartered UiPath has agreed to a 10-year lease for around 10K SF on the 50th floor, with a move scheduled for late summer 2024. A second letting, signed with a London-based service provider, has been signed for about 25K SF across the whole of the sixth floor on a 10-year lease.
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Borough Yards has signed five new independent retailers to join the scheme in Southwark, including vegan and sustainable skincare brand Sknfed, handmade décor producer La Lune London, handmade jewellery designer Linnet Jewellery, eyewear brand Pop Specs, and ethical slow fashion brand and social enterprise Handmade Stories.
The new arrivals will be on Stonecutters Lane, the latest and final stage of the Borough Yards project in London Bridge, which has been conceived as a new marketplace for emerging independent and ethical brands.
DEVELOPMENT
Reef Group has appointed construction company Ardmore to deliver the final phase of the Tribeca purpose-built life sciences campus in the King’s Cross Knowledge Quarter.
The campus is near The Francis Crick Institute, the British Library, UCL and Kings College London. The Reflector, The Assembly and The Connector buildings will deliver lab spaces with facilities designed for life sciences businesses ranging from discovery science to international pharmaceutical companies, Reef Group said.
The buildings will also have direct access to the new Tribeca square, as well as accommodating new shops, restaurants and rooftop terraces. The final phase of the works include a 12-storey residential building.
PEOPLE
Moorfield Group has announced a series of promotions for its group board and origination teams, including a restructuring of the CEO position and the creation of an executive chairman role.
CEO Marc Gilbard, who founded the private equity real estate company, will take up the newly created position of executive chairman. He will share CEO responsibilities with Chief Investment Officer Charles Ferguson Davie.
Sadie Malim joins the Moorfield Group board as chief legal and corporate development officer, and Steve Hall joins the board as chief financial officer. On the origination team, Pablo Hutchinson and Oliver Wallbridge have been promoted to senior investment manager and investment associate, respectively.
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Pocket Living has announced changes to its senior management, with founder and CEO Marc Vlessing becoming chair and chief financial officer and Paul Rickard promoted to managing director.
Vlessing, who founded Pocket in 2004 with Paul Harbard, will take on the new role as chair of the company, while Rickard, who has been Pocket’s CFO for the past five years, will now be responsible for leading Pocket Living’s long-term strategy and operational delivery.
Under Vlessing, Pocket Living became one of London’s first developers to focus on delivering housing for the starter market, with housing requiring no grant, secured as affordable in perpetuity and sold outright at a discount to first-time buyers with low to moderate incomes.
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Segro has appointed Anna Bond as head of Western Corridor, responsible for the overall leadership of the company’s development and asset management activities across the Thames Valley, including the Slough Trading Estate, Heathrow Airport and the M4 corridor portfolio. This region has £5.3B of assets under management, the largest in the group.
Bond has more than 20 years’ experience in the real estate sector, most recently as executive director in Grosvenor’s UK property business, where she was responsible for the delivery and letting for the UK development pipeline across office, retail, residential and public realm.
She will join Segro on 10 June and will be a member of the company’s UK leadership team, reporting to UK Managing Director James Craddock.
