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.
British Land has acquired £240M of retail parks, reflecting a blended net equivalent yield of 7.4%. The UK REIT said that acquisitions are in line with its plan to reinvest the £360M it received from the sale of Meadowhall Shopping Centre into its expanding retail park portfolio.
The six retail parks have been acquired since April, with a weighted average unexpired lease term of five years. It acquired Orchard Centre in Didcot and Cyfarthfa Shopping Park in Merthyr Tydfil from Brookfield, Enham Arch Retail Park in Andover, Queen’s Drive Retail Park in Kilmarnock and St David’s Retail Park in Bangor from M7 Real Estate, and Southampton Road Retail Park in Salisbury, plus the remaining 12.5% interest in New Mersey Retail Park in Speke.
“We are seeing good opportunities to allocate capital into retail parks, and have swiftly delivered our plan to fully offset the earnings dilution from the £360M Meadowhall disposal with the acquisition of £240M of high quality retail parks at attractive yields,” British Land CEO Simon Carter said in a statement.
“With low capex requirements, parks offer attractive cash returns and, with 99% occupancy, our portfolio is delivering strong rental growth.”
DEALS
CBRE Investment Management has bought Leamington Shopping Park from Abrdn's UK Real Estate Fund for £57.6M.
The park comprises more than 159K SF and is let to retailers including M&S, TK Maxx, New Look, Halfords, The Range, Boots, JD, Next and Clarks, among others, with an average unexpired lease term of 8.6 years.
Knight Frank advised CBRE IM.
CORPORATE
Barratt Developments has entered a £150M joint venture with Homes England and Lloyds Banking Group to create Made Partnership, which will focus on the master development of large sites for new homes across the UK.
Made Partnership will act as master developer for large-scale, residential-led developments from 1,000 to more than 10,000 homes, along with a variety of community facilities and employment uses, the companies said.
Potential development opportunities will include large brownfield developments and new garden-village-style communities, and the companies said the move was intended as a long-term partnership, initially backed by combined equity funding of up to £150M provided equally by the partners.
PLANNING
Developer Hub, in partnership with sustainable and impact investor Bridges Fund Management, has received planning permission for its office-to-co-living conversion at 45 Beech Street from the City of London.
Located adjacent to the Barbican Estate, Cornerstone will deliver new co-living homes, amenities and improved public realm. It was designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.
The partners are targeting BREEAM Excellent and an energy performance certificate A rating.
LEASING
U.S. law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has expanded and extended its lease for its offices at 90 High Holborn in London. It has grown its space in the building from 50K SF to 67K SF on multiple leases that run to 2034, making the firm the de facto anchor tenant at 90 High Holborn.
The building was originally developed by Minerva in 2003 as the headquarters of Olswang, and the current landlord is Lab Tech.
PEOPLE
UK value-add real estate investment and asset management firm Tri7 has appointed Ben Beck as partner. Beck joined from Blue Coast Capital and will launch Tri7’s new office investment business, TriOffice, in which he will assume the role of managing partner.
As a director at Blue Coast Capital, Beck was responsible for UK value-add and opportunistic commercial property investment. He previously worked at Columbia Threadneedle.
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José Pellicer and Chris Warren have been announced as the founding partners of London-based European value-add real estate partnership Evonite.
Pellicer has joined as partner, strategy, and Warren as partner, finance and operations, and they will team up with CEO Paul Hampton, Charles-Nicolas Tarrière, partner, portfolio management, and Kevin Muscat, partner, investments.
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Real asset investor, developer and manager Kajima Europe has appointed Chris Gill as managing director of its partnerships business, which is the property and project finance investment arm of Kajima Europe.
Kajima Partnerships has social infrastructure projects with a total investment value of more than £1B to date and has 4 gigawatts of renewable energy projects in development across Europe, the company said.
Gill will be responsible for accelerating the growth of Kajima Partnerships' business across renewables, regeneration and social infrastructure, which includes Kajima’s public-sector-focussed software business, Kajima Community.
