REC staff

US pension fund acts after property portfolio’s value falls from $17.6bn to $13.5bn in six months

MGPA has bought residential land assembly company Land Investment Holdings in its first  UK deal for several years. The company was put up for sale in February. The price values the business at £87m and was bid up by competition from a second real estate private equity bidder, Carlyle Group. MGPA is paying £52.5m in […]

A large slice of RBS’s transferred loans are due for repayment in 2009 Three quarters of Royal Bank of Scotland’s £91bn commercial property loan book has problems, according to data published this month detailing loans RBS has put into the Asset Protection Scheme. The Treasury says all of RBS’s 56,650 of transferred real estate loans, […]

Recovery starts with £200m Aviva Investors raised £200m in a first closing on 27 November for the Aviva UK Recovery Fund, a diversified, ungeared, five-year vehicle. Contributions to the fund included £65m from Aviva multi-manager clients, as well as UK pension funds. Aviva said it was considering a second closing  with existing interest. Eurohypo gives […]

Several investors and banks are trying to buy the entire White Tower London office portfolio from its special servicer, CB Richard Ellis Loan Servicing. CBRELS said last month in a note to investors in the £1.15bn securitisation secured on the properties, that it expected to sell the nine assets ‘piecemeal’ between now and the end […]

Liberty International is expected to complete its refinancing of Lakeside shopping centre as early as January. The regional shopping centre specialist said last month that it was “engaged in positive discussions with a number of lenders” about refinancing the Opera Lakeside CMBS deal. Sources believe the company has agreed seven-year bank financing rather than a […]

Duet and partner Forum seeded fund but institutions also contributed

PRUPIM has rebalanced one  of its funds through £100m of sub-sector swap trades with a single counterparty in the property derivatives market. PRUPIM has made a series of paired trades going short and long on different sectors with Royal Bank of Scotland as the counterparty. Will Robson, PRUPIM’s head of property derivatives, who worked on the […]

Central bank’s ABS repurchasing facility is made more expensive to use

Joint-venture partners will launch first new long/short property equities fund for two years and widen investor base of successful Iceberg vehicle Reech CBRE Alternative Real Estate is to dramatically expand its real estate hedge fund products at the start of 2010. Joint-venture partners CB Richard Ellis and Reech Alternative Investment Management will unveil the first […]