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.
Lakeside Shopping Centre owner SGS Group has completed a recapitalisation that includes £445M of new senior financing from Lloyds Bank.
The company, which also owns Atria Watford, Victoria Centre in Nottingham and Braehead near Glasgow, has secured £395M in a senior term loan and a £50M capex facility.
The senior term loan, which has an initial maturity in 2028 and can then be extended by up to a year, is fully drawn and has been used alongside available cash to repay a total of £444M to existing creditors, SGS Group said. The residual £1.3B of SGS debt not repaid from the transaction has been exchanged into “equity or equity-like equivalents within the structure.”
As part of the deal, a new SGS board will be appointed with Jaap Tonckens, former group chief financial officer of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, as nonexecutive chairman and Peter Williams, Jon Lurie and Anders Hemmingsen as nonexec board members.
SGS separated from retail landlord Intu Properties when the company entered administration in 2020, appointing AlixPartners in an executive management and board role, Global Mutual as asset manager and Savills as property manager.
DEVELOPMENT
Hines has secured a resolution to grant planning approval from Southwark Council to build a new office and residential development at 18 Blackfriars Road. The approval was secured working with architect Foster + Partners and development manager Lipton Rogers for the 2-acre brownfield site.
The scheme will be designed to be fossil fuel-free, 100% electric and net-zero carbon in operation, with 95% of the site’s heat demand served by ground-source heat pumps, according to Hines.
Part of the development will include affordable homes, free workspace for local businesses and entrepreneurs, and a cultural hub for locals. It aims be the first high-rise scheme in the UK to achieve the WELL Community Gold Standard.
The new scheme will consist of three buildings, two delivering more than 400 new homes, with 40% being affordable. The third will create 800K SF of office space, 20K SF of affordable workspace for local enterprises, assembly rooms, educational space and a new central public space with retail and food outlets.
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AEW has received a resolution to grant planning permission to transform the former Debenhams department store in Bristol into a residential-led mixed-use development.
The project, designed by AWW Architects, is planned to regenerate the site on the edge of Bristol’s Broadmead shopping district with additional retail and hospitality space and more than 500 new rental homes, 100 of which will be affordable. The proposals will also reinstate the medieval Barr’s Street, lost when the Debenhams store was constructed in the 1950s, a key requirement of the council’s development delivery plan for the city centre.
The property was acquired in 2022 by AEW’s Urban Real Estate Fund, which repositions underused retail spaces to support town centre regeneration.
DEALS
Investor Compagnie du Parc has acquired two industrial assets totalling 140K SF, Fives Arches Business Estate in Sidcup and Bourne Industrial Park in Crayford, for £30M.
These acquisitions follow the completion of several disposals of mature assets in the UK and Switzerland in 2023 generating £150M, the company said.
CdP has also announced the appointment of Chris Nicoll as portfolio director to manage the group’s existing assets and support new acquisitions. Before joining CdP, he was head of industrial and logistics at Columbia Threadneedle Real Estate Partners.
PEOPLE
Great Portland Estates has announced three new senior appointments to support its ambition to double its flex portfolio to more than 1M SF.
Felicity Roocke has joined as head of workspace design and delivery, Chris Stokes has been appointed head of customer experience, and Trevor Phyo has been appointed GPE’s senior development manager.
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Bidwells has appointed operational living specialist Iain Murray and acquired his former Cortland Consult team. The move is a step toward capitalising on the growing operational living market, positioning Bidwells in the multidisciplinary advisory space in the living sector, the company said in a release.
Murray, former Cortland Consult senior director of build-to-rent consultancy for Europe, becomes head of operational living at Bidwells.
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London flexible workspace operator LentaSpace has appointed Tim Giles as its new managing director. Giles has over 30 years of experience in the flexible office sector, notably at Argyll and Beaumont Offices, where he was chief operating officer from 2017 to 2023.
LentaSpace was established in 1981 and manages a portfolio of 13 buildings it owns and operates across London, offering serviced offices, meeting rooms and virtual office services.
