This Week's London Deal Sheet: Blackstone Backs Valor With £260M Refinancing
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.
Valor Real Estate Partners, on behalf of its joint venture with QuadReal Property Group, has completed a £260M refinancing with Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies, secured against its VIQR 1 London Urban Logistics Portfolio.
The transaction, which represents the largest debt facility Valor has entered into, will enable the joint venture to “continue driving long-term value creation through active asset management,” the company said.
Totalling approximately 1M SF, 81% of the assets have A or B energy performance certificates, and three are certified BREEAM Excellent. The 14 urban logistics and light industrial assets are all located in London submarkets and suited for last-mile delivery, e-commerce fulfilment and essential service logistics.
The transaction marks the latest financing that Valor has closed to support the expansion of its pan-European urban logistics platform, completing 19 new loan facilities totalling €1.4B (£1.2B) since the start of 2021 for a mix of development and investment with 14 partners.
“The facility represents our largest refinancing to date,” Valor partner and Head of Finance Matthew Phillips said in a statement. “We have expanded our lending relationship with Blackstone, whose shared conviction in the long-term fundamentals of urban logistics and speed of execution made them an ideal financing partner.”
LEASING
The Lego Group has signed a lease for 192K SF across 3.5 floors of Wolfe Asset Management’s 76 Southbank and will relocate from Farringdon in 2027.
The 300K SF Grade II-listed office building is adjacent to the National Theatre and has undergone transformation and an extension, delivered with Stanhope as development manager, LaSalle Investment Management as asset manager and overseen by Multiplex as main contractor. CBRE and JLL are joint agents.
Targeting BREEAM Outstanding and a NABERS design reviewed rating of five stars, the building includes 50K SF of outdoor terraces.
FINANCE
Eldridge Real Estate Credit has provided around £100M in debt facilities to Vita Group for the development and construction of a 591-unit purpose-built student accommodation scheme in Glasgow.
This project marks the team’s ninth financing transaction with Vita Group, bringing its total support to nearly £1B, including current and redeemed facilities, across the delivery of nearly 7,000 student housing units.
The 18-storey development, which is just northwest of Glasgow city centre, will feature 591 studio apartments, fully equipped kitchens, a fitness centre, cinema, games room, dedicated study spaces and high-speed internet.
Construction is expected to be completed in July 2027, with McAleer & Rushe as developer and contractor.
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Supermarket Income REIT has completed a £90M refinancing through a new unsecured debt facility with Barclays that will be used to refinance the company’s secured debt facilities with Wells Fargo and Bayerische Landesbank of £30M and £55.4M, respectively.
The interest-only facility has a maturity of three years and two one-year extension options at the lender’s discretion. It is priced at a margin of 1.55% above SONIA. The company intends to use the value of the existing interest rate hedges on the refinanced Wells Fargo and Bayerische Landesbank facilities to cap the interest rate on the facility at 5% for the three-year term, Supermarket Income REIT said.
Following the debt refinancing and completion of a recently announced joint venture, the company has an expected pro forma loan-to-value ratio of circa 31%.
DEALS
L&G has acquired The Place, Nottingham on behalf of L&G's Institutional Retirement business to bolster its student living portfolio. The direct-let student accommodation consists of 409 beds to the south of Nottingham city centre and half a mile from the University of Nottingham’s new Castle Meadow campus.
The purpose-built student accommodation scheme, developed by MRP and constructed by McAleer & Rushe, was completed in August and is in its first operational academic year. It is operated by Homes For Students under its Prestige Student Living brand, which will be retained as L&G’s operating partner under the new ownership.
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Royal London Asset Management Property has acquired Enderby Logistics Hub, an 82-acre development, partnering with Canmoor to speculatively develop 1.2M SF of logistics space with an estimated gross development value of £300M.
The site benefits from outline planning consent for 1.2M SF of industrial and logistics space, covering both manufacturing and distribution facilities, and is 4 miles from Leicester.
The development will feature a flagship 500K SF unit. The acquisition of Enderby Logistics Hub aligns with RLAMP’s strategy to grow its industrial development pipeline by securing prime sites serving as long-term holdings for its funds, the company said. It has £3.2B of industrial assets across the UK.
DEVELOPMENT
Southwark Council has granted permission for Art-Invest Real Estate’s detailed proposals for Dockside Canada Water Plot B. Approval enables Dockside to bring forward new student accommodation, affordable homes and community space.
Dockside Canada Water will be an urban quarter designed as the commercial gateway to British Land’s 53-acre new town centre in Canada Water. Art-Invest secured outline planning permission for the master plan in March 2022. Plot B has been designed by TP Bennett and comprises two residential-led buildings and 742 new student rooms, plus 75 affordable homes.
Plot A incorporates One Dockside and Two Dockside and will add more than 700K SF of Grade A office space.
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Reading Borough Council has approved redevelopment plans for Broad Street Mall, a major town centre regeneration scheme being progressed by a partnership between McLaren Living and AEW.
The renewed Broad Street Mall will see the southern part of the 4.6-acre site deliver 643 build-to-rent homes, circa 19K SF of commercial space, primarily comprising retail and leisure, as well as improved public realm and an extension to the NHS walk-in centre.
The four residential buildings will be positioned to the south of Broad Street Mall, tracing the Dusseldorf Way link between the Hexagon and the Minster and integrating into the Minster Quarter master plan, which is also being brought forward by McLaren Living in partnership with Reading Borough Council.
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Aviva Capital Partners and mixed-use developer Socius have unveiled plans for a new £1B development to create the “world’s leading centre for cancer research and treatment” in Sutton.
A planning application has been submitted to the London Borough of Sutton for the development, which will be delivered on a 12-acre site at the London Cancer Hub, adjacent to The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust’s Sutton site.
ACP and Socius plan to deliver circa 1M SF of research and laboratory space, and the new buildings will range from large-scale facilities to smaller, flexible lab and incubator spaces for startups. The planning application is expected to be determined this year.
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Planning consent for the next phase of Battersea Power Station has been granted by Wandsworth Council for residential, retail, community and leisure development, plus the completion of Electric Boulevard.
This latest phase will add two new Gehry Partners-designed residential buildings comprising 306 new homes, with one of the new buildings, Prospect Place 3, to include senior living apartments.
The latest approval allows Battersea Power Station to complete the development of Electric Boulevard, adding 70K SF of new commercial space for shops, cafés and restaurants, with construction expected to start later this year and completion anticipated in 2029.
CORPORATE
Michela Hancock has launched Hilltop Property Partners in partnership with Hilltop Capital Partners founder Paul Oberschneider.
HPP will focus on scaling its new UK platform, offering professionally managed, quality housing for middle-income working households, the company said, with its first development a 425-unit build-to-rent scheme in Leeds’ Victoria Riverside district. HPP has selected Greystar as its preferred operating partner.
“We’re at a critical juncture for the UK housing market, where enabling middle-income households to access quality accommodation, and still have headroom within their monthly earnings, is more critical than ever,” Hancock said in a statement.
