Dutch Pension Giant To Make UK Outlet Mall Debut With London Buy
Giant Dutch pension fund APG is dipping its toe into the UK retail property sector with a £120M London designer outlet buy.
VIA Outlets, which is owned by APG, is buying the London Designer Outlet scheme at Wembley Park from Lone Star-owned Quintain for £120M, React News reported. The price represents a yield of 6.75% for the 265K SF scheme, which has about 72 occupiers.
Tenants at London Designer Outlet include Nike, Adidas and Levi’s. Along with Crosstree’s Icon scheme at the O2 in south east London, it is the closest designer outlet scheme to central London.
The outlet mall sector has been one of the more resilient retail subsections of the past decade, buoyed by the fact that the products sold are not available online and that consumers always love a bargain. The £120M sale is one of the largest retail deals in any sector of the past 12 months.
APG paid £274M for partner Hammerson’s 50% stake in the VIA business in 2020, as it sought to raise money to pay down debt. VIA owns 11 outlets across Europe totalling 2.9M SF and 1,100 stores.
Lone Star is in the process of selling out of the Wembley Park holdings it acquired when it took Quintain private in a £1B deal in 2015. But it has put the sale of the giant BTR element of Wembley Park on hold due to uncertainty in the real estate investment market.
