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 [email protected].
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is understood to be set to buy a 49% stake in luxury hotel group Rocco Forte Hotels for around £590M.
Saudi’s Public Investment Fund plans to expand the chain into new international markets, while founders Rocco Forte and Olga Polizzi will retain the remaining 51% stake and remain as executive chairman and deputy chair, respectively.
PIF’s deal for the minority stake of the hotel chain values the entire group at around £1.2B.
Rocco Forte Hotels, founded in 1996, operates 14 individual hotels and resorts as well as 20 private villas across the UK, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Russia. The group also has plans for three new hotels in 2024 and 2025, including one in Dubai.
ACQUISITIONS
Criterion Capital has acquired Haymarket House in London’s Piccadilly Circus for a reported £135M.
The West End specialist plans to convert the upper floors into a £400M hotel, with the existing restaurant and comedy club on the ground floor retained.
Haymarket House, a circa 128K SF art deco office and retail property, was almost sold to Best Star Real Estate and Marathon Asset Management for £140M in October. However, the joint venture did not secure funding for the deal.
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Omniplex Cinema Group, Ireland’s largest cinema company, has acquired five cinemas from Empire Cinemas Group, which collapsed earlier this year.
The group revealed it will spend £22.5M over 18 months to purchase and renovate the sites in Birmingham, Ipswich, Sutton, Clydebank and High Wycombe, the company’s first outlets in mainland UK.
The acquisitions, advised on by Avison Young, follow the collapse of Empire this summer and will take Omniplex’s portfolio to 43 cinemas, with the remainder of the sites in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
FINANCING
Last-mile real estate specialist Valor Real Estate Partners has completed a £101M debt facility with Canada Life Asset Management. The five-year investment loan, referenced off gilts, represents the first transaction between the two parties.
The loan is secured against five recently acquired urban infill logistics properties, all located in inner London submarkets where the reallocation of land for residential use has restricted industrial development.
These include two previously vacant units on Gemini Business Park in Beckton, east London, where Valor has completed a sustainability-led refurbishment programme, delivering 15K SF of warehousing, leased on a 10-year term to Jardine Group, plus a 22K SF property in Wandsworth, acquired from a private landlord and leased to retailer Phase Eight.
It also includes four distribution assets on the Tera 40 industrial estate, Greenford, totalling 341K SF, fully let to Tesco, Palletways, Royal Mail and Micheldever. Also included is a 31K SF estate in Canning Town acquired off-market for last-mile logistics operators and a 112K SF estate in Mitcham that is 72% occupied by three tenants.
LEASING
Aviva Investors has completed two office leasing agreements totalling 9K SF at 30 Golden Square in Soho, London, following the completion of a refurbishment programme to decarbonise the building.
The agreements will see Kinnevik, a Swedish-listed growth investor specialising in digital consumer businesses, take more than 4K SF across the fourth floor at the building. Separately, Aviva Investors has confirmed that LBS Properties, a real estate company focused on residential and commercial sectors in central London, has agreed to lease almost 5K SF.
In all, the works at 30 Golden Square are estimated to have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 58 tonnes per annum, a reduction of more than 62%. As a result, the building is on track to receive BREEAM Excellent rating.
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Helical and Ashby Capital have let the first, second and third floors comprising 68K SF of office space at The JJ Mack Building, 33 Charterhouse Street, EC1, to J Sainsbury. The retailer is expected to relocate its existing London office from 33 Holborn, close to the new building, in the next two years.
The recently developed building totals 201K SF across 11 floors, alongside 5,400 SF of ground-floor retail. It has an energy performance certificate rating of A and is anticipated to receive both a BREEAM Outstanding rating and a NABERS 5-star assessment for energy in use, the companies said. Tenant amenities include 426 cycle spaces and high-quality showers and changing rooms.
With the sixth and seventh floors, totalling 38K SF, let to Partners Group and the 13K SF ninth floor let to Corio Generation, part of the Macquarie Group, The JJ Mack Building is now 58% occupied.
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Avison Young has been appointed to lead the nationwide expansion of Boots Hearingcare World of Hearing branches.
Following the launch of three World of Hearing stores in the south-east of England at Chelmsford, St. Albans and Welwyn Garden City, the company is set to open standalone branches nationwide, redefining the landscape of retail healthcare on the high street.
DEVELOPMENT
Property developer Neat Developments and BlackRock Real Assets have achieved a resolution to grant planning consent for a mixed-use scheme comprising 355K SF of stacked industrial space together with 1,800 new homes.
Thirty-five percent of the site will be public open space, together with a new Waterside Park overlooking the Walthamstow Wetlands.
The scheme, anticipated to involve a 10-year development period and representing over £650M in investment by site owner BlackRock Real Assets, was approved by Waltham Forest Council and will see the industrial-led mixed-use development take place at Uplands Business Park on Blackhorse Lane in London E17.
Phase 1 will consist of nearly 194K SF of new stacked industrial space over four floors and 119 build-to-rent homes, of which 35% are affordable. Phase 2 of the development will comprise 162K SF of new industrial space and up to 1,680 new homes.
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Airport Industrial Property Unit Trust has announced that the London Borough of Hounslow has granted planning permission for a new 67K SF gross external area industrial warehouse at its Radius Park industrial campus at Heathrow Airport.
The new RP6 warehouse will be a consolidation of two previous warehouse buildings at AIPUT’s 16-acre Radius Park campus. The building will be stripped back to the structural steel and floor slab to create a new sustainable and flexible single warehouse building that will also include Grade A first-floor offices and benefit from a highly secure, fenced location.
The new warehouse has been designed to achieve EPC A+ energy sustainability performance. Additionally, large areas of sustainably sourced timber cladding will be used on the new building with the aim of achieving a minimum of BREEAM Excellent and EPC A+, the company said.
