Rent Guarantee Insurance for Tenants| British Land’s £1 billion boost for London property market
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The London property market received a huge boost today as one of the capital’s biggest landlords, British Land, raised £1 billion to spend on acquisitions and new developments.
The country’s second largest property company tapped its shareholders for £500 million through a share placing and sold Ropemaker Place in the City for £472 million.Rent Guarantee Insurance for Tenants
“It’s very good news for London,†said Chris Grigg, chief executive of British Land. “We’ve got a lot of interest in the share placing and confirmation from shareholders that this is exactly the type of thing they want to see British Land doing.â€
The firm said that today’s share placing would be used to fund £123 million of deals it has already done, a further £150 million which are in advanced negotiations, and the rest on a “growing pipeline of opportunities.â€
British Land shares dropped 19.25p to 561.25p as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS went about placing the 90 million new shares being offered. That represents 9.9% of British Land’s existing share capital.
Ropemaker Place was completed in 2009 and is home to a number of City firms including The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Markit, Liberum Capital and Macquarie Group.Rent Guarantee Insurance for Tenants
It currently yields £24 million a year in rents rising to £27.5 million at the next review.
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Grigg said: “This is a very large building even by London standards. There will have been very few buildings of this size or larger ever sold. This is absolute confirmation that we see continued good demand in the London office market. For prime London property we’ve been out of the recession for some time.â€
Property agents said the deal was the third largest City of London property sale in the last four years, beaten only by Plantation Place which sold for just under £500 million a year ago and One Bishops Square which fetched £557 million in 2010.
The buyer is a consortium led by Axa Real Estate which includes a French investor and two from the Far East.
Grigg added: “This just underlines how important London has become on the global real estate stage and as a leading world city.†He said the sale also meant that for the first time British Land’s West End portfolio is larger than its City one. Like many property companies it has been reducing dependency on City properties as values have risen more sharply in areas like Mayfair and Fitzrovia.
Last month it paid £142 million for the Ealing Broadway shopping centre as part of its shift west, and a bet on increased future Crossrail traffic.
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