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Even the world’s largest investors can’t avoid the crisis in UK retail and leisure property. The companies that own a trio of UK assets backed by a Blackstone fund and an Abu Dhabi state investment fund have fallen into insolvency and been put into administration, Bisnow can reveal.
Partners at Grant Thornton have been appointed administrators to the special purpose vehicles that own the Five Ways Entertainment Centre in Birmingham, the Festival Leisure Park in Blackpool and the Garden Square shopping centre in Letchworth.
The assets were bought by the Valad European Diversified Fund in 2014 and 2015 for a combined £66.5M. But accounts for the fund show that the value is likely to have dropped to below the £38M of debt, provided by Royal Bank of Scotland, secured against them. The fund’s directors put the SPVs into administration, the UK equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, because the debt was in default.
The accounts also show that the fund has two main investors behind it: Green Park Investments, a vehicle owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council; and BTO Diversified European Property, a vehicle owned by a fund in Blackstone’s Tactical Opportunities investment division.“The impact of
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