Kennedy Wilson And CPPIB Expand Single-Family Portfolio By £300M: The 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.
Kennedy Wilson’s UK single-family rental housing joint venture with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has exchanged contracts on the acquisition of another 788 single-family rental units, spending £300M across 10 separate transactions.
The acquisitions are being financed through a £500M, five-year debt facility from Goldman Sachs. Goldman will also provide a subscription facility to the JV.
The 788 units are located across 10 development sites in Northampton, Nottingham, Hemel Hempstead, Watford, Wokingham, Bristol, Cheltenham and Didcot. They have been acquired from existing partners including Barratt Redrow, Miller Homes and Wavensmere, alongside new partners Persimmon Homes, Taylor Wimpey and Kier Property/Vistry.
Since the JV was announced in October 2024, approximately £700M has been committed to the platform, with CPP Investments investing £500M of equity and Kennedy Wilson acting as operating partner. The JV has now grown to 2,000 units across 23 sites. The ultimate target size of the portfolio is 4,500 units.
DEALS
Amazon’s last-mile warehouse and distribution facility at Channel Commercial Park, Titanic Quarter, Belfast has been sold for £26M, reflecting a net initial yield of 6.58%.
The 411.2K SF property was acquired by Lysara from UBS Asset Management. It was built in 2020 and is fully let to Amazon UK Services on a 15-year lease.
Located within the Belfast Harbour industrial area, the property occupies a self-contained site of approximately 9.5 acres, and the facility comprises a 91K SF distribution warehouse and office accommodation alongside a triple-deck van park with 479 spaces, extending to more than 320K SF.
DEVELOPMENT
Ballymore and Central European investor and developer Penta Real Estate have announced that the second phase of existing Ballymore scheme The Brentford Project has completed, with an estimated gross development value of over £300M.
The second phase comprises 373 new homes as part of a town centre regeneration reconnecting Brentford’s high street with the waterfront. On over 11.8 acres, the new homes will be delivered alongside retail, a new cinema and supermarket, public art, community spaces, and landscaped walkways along the River Brent.
The joint venture’s Cuba Street 52-storey residential tower adjacent to Canary Wharf and The Capston, the final phase of the Embassy Gardens development in Nine Elms, means the JV is set to deliver over 1,000 new homes across the capital, with a GDV of around £1B.
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The Langham Estate has started a major refurbishment of 50 Eastcastle Street as part of its £50M investment programme. The building will deliver circa 46K SF of refurbished workspace, with floors up to 25K SF.
Originally the site of the Princess Theatre, opposite the former Pantheon Theatre on Oxford Street, 50 Eastcastle Street is being designed by Pitman Tozer Architects and will include a dedicated outdoor courtyard space.
FINANCE
Scotch Corner Designer Village Holdings is to apply for admission to trading on the Aquis Real Asset Market segment of the Aquis Stock Exchange Growth Market, with the listing expected to complete in April. It is a stock exchange for companies that own a single building.
Scotch Corner has appointed Oberon Investments and Retail Book to raise £25.5M of new capital, targeting both retail investors and institutional investors, ahead of an intended flotation.
In addition, the development land and business will be contributed to the company by the sponsor in exchange for shares at an aggregate value of £16.5M, a small discount to the net value of the land as valued by Savills.
Proceeds will be used to pay down existing debt and progress construction of the first phase of the development, a circa 182.5K SF designer outlet village currently circa 66% pre-let and with a predicted GDV of around £169M, as well as funding the acquisition of land for Phase 2.
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London-based Castleforge has launched Catenary Capital, a new private equity real estate manager based in Malaysia and established in partnership with Foster Capital.
Catenary Capital has been formed under a Malaysian government-linked programme designed to encourage private market investment and support the development of domestic investment.
Catenary Capital will manage and invest institutional capital into selected real estate sectors. Its initial separate managed account with KWAP is for £100M with a mandate to invest in Shariah-compliant real estate opportunities in Malaysia and internationally.
LEASING
Helical has exchanged contracts to lease 20K SF of fitted space at The Bower campus on Old Street in London, EC1.
Artificial intelligence platform Incident.io is due to move to levels five and six of the tower in June. The letting represents a third of the available space at the campus and increases total occupancy to 87%.
JLL and Compton acted for Helical, and Making Moves acted for Incident.io.
PEOPLE
Hines has appointed Tatiana Tezel as fund manager for Hines European Property Partners, the firm’s flagship European core-plus fund. Tezel will lead the next phase of HEPP’s growth, focusing on capital formation and strategic deployment across Europe, the company said.
Tezel joined Hines from BlackRock, where she served as managing director and co-portfolio manager of BlackRock’s Europe Property Fund VI, with responsibility for fund strategy, capital formation, capital deployment and portfolio performance across the platform.
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Big Yellow Group CEO Jim Gibson is to retire and will step down as CEO and from the Big Yellow board on 20 July, following the company’s annual general meeting.
Chief Operating Officer John Hunter will replace Gibson as CEO.
Gibson is a co-founder of Big Yellow and has been CEO for 23 years, while Hunter joined the group as COO in April 2024 and the board in July 2025.
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Arc & Co., part of FRP Advisory, has appointed Martin Farinola as head of institutional capital advisory. He joined from Delancey and will play a key leadership role in developing FRP’s strategic expansion and creation of its dedicated real estate pillar, the company said.
Farinola has 25 years’ experience in real estate finance and investment, having worked with fund managers and lenders including Goldman Sachs, Brookfield and BlackRock. Most recently, he was head of real estate debt strategies at Delancey, where he led the firm’s real estate debt strategy and oversaw the management of its debt.