Tritax Big Box REIT has signed a £500m, five-year facility with a syndicate of four lenders, reducing its cost of debt by 35bps. Barclays, Helaba, Wells Fargo and ING Real Estate Finance have provided the loan, secured on Tritax’s portfolio of logistics assets, at an opening margin of 140bps above three-month LIBOR.

La Banque Postale and pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank have provided a €480m, long-term loan to the French government for the leasing and eventual purchase of the Tour Séquoia tower in Paris. The facility, referred to as a finance lease, allows the French government to pay a market rent over the term of the contract and then acquire the building at the end by paying the nominal sum of €1.

Aviva Investors Real Estate Finance as provided a £120m, 20-year loan to London specialist property firm Shaftesbury to refinance a portfolio of retail, office and residential assets. The new fixed-rate facility will be allocated across assets in Shaftesbury’s Carnaby Street estate. It follows a £130m, 15-year loan from Aviva Investors in March, also secured on […]

Proceeds from the sale of assets in the heavily defaulted £850m Gemini CMBS should be classified as principal and not interest, the High Court in London has ruled. The decision means that under the deal’s contract only the Class A noteholders should receive payments from any asset sales. Had the court ruled sale proceeds as interest, then the junior noteholders, classes B to E, would also be eligible for payments.

Apollo Global Management’s mid-cap lending business has bought a $3.6bn portfolio of corporate and real estate loans from Mubadala GE Capital (MGEC). MidCap Financial, which provides debt to businesses across all industries and currently manages around $3.3bn, said it expected the deal to close in Q4 2015.

The European Commission (EC) has launched its Capital Markets Union Action Plan, which could have far-reaching consequences for real estate finance and securitisation. The five-year programme outlines the EC’s plans to build a single market for capital across all 28 EU member states and will see a raft of news rules introduced affecting sectors such as securitisation, infrastructure investment, and covered bonds.

German banks Berlin Hyp and pbb Deutsch Pfandbriefbank have provided €173m in total for the acquisition and development of logistics and retail assets in France. pbb has supplied an €87m, five-year facitlity to a joint venture between McArthurGlen Designer Outlet and retail developer Simon Property Group.

Hammerson and Allianz Real Estate have jointly bought NAMA’s Project Jewel loans portfolio for €1.85bn. The UK REIT and the German investor, part of insurance giant Allianz, have formed a 50:50 joint venture to buy the portfolio valued at around €2.6bn.

The Bank of England should not raise interest rates just yet and should maintain its quantitative easing (QE) programme to encourage bank lending, an audience at Real Estate Capital’s Europe Forum 2015 heard this morning. In his keynote address to more than 130 real estate finance professionals, Dr Gerard Lyons, chief economic advisor to London City Hall, said the risks to the UK economy of raising interest rates outweighed maintaining the status quo.

LaSalle Investment Management's Michael Zerda is joining Blackstone and Blackrock's Rawle Howard is joining Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. Zerda, European director in the debt investments and special situations group at LaSalle, is to become managing director at Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies (BREDS). He will report to senior managing director Rob Harper and is expected to start his role in Q1 2016. Howard, head of European real estate debt originations at BlackRock, is to become head of European real estate debt at CPPIB.