Barclays has issued a £56m development finance package to HFD Group for its pre-let CityPark project in Aberdeen. The facility will be used to build out a 215,000 sq ft office building in the Altens area of the city. The building has been let for 50 years to oil and gas company, Wood Group at […]
Oaktree Capital Management has begun a search for around £350m of debt for its purchase of three business parks from MEPC. The US private equity firm agreed a deal earlier this month to buy the parks alongside asset manager Patrizia for around £435m. It is looking for around an 80% loan-to-value arrangement which could be […]
Pricoa Mortgage Capital has completed its first deal in Germany. The commercial mortgage lending arm of Prudential Finance has provided Hines Global REIT with a €36m facility to purchase a 56,500 sq m logistics property in Forchheim near Nuremburg. The building is fully let to third party logistics provider Simon Hegele. Around 20,000 sq m […]
Los Angeles-based alternative investment firm Thorofare Capital has raised $200m for Thorofare Asset Based Lending Fund III in less than eight months.
The firm said it has another $50m “soft-circled” to reach the $250m goal by year-end. It will cap commitments at $300m.
Fund III had its first closing in November and has invested approximately $90m in transactions, making new senior debt investments between $2m and $25m in opportunistic, distressed and value added commercial real estate.
Kevin Miller, CEO of Thorofare Capital, said in a written statement that Fund III is “positioned to continue to close loans quickly in order to help borrowers finance opportunistic acquisitions, recapitalizations, discounted pay offs, note acquisitions, and other special situations such as open-bid auctions.”
The firm’s previous fund, Thorofare Asset Based Lending Fund II, originated approximately $230m in loans and has realized over 60% of invested capital since the end of its investment period in December.
“The support of our L.P.s, represented by a recommitment rate north of 90%, has been vital to the success of both the firm and our current fund,” Miller said.
Thorofare, which specializes in commercial real estate bridge loans, has closed 90 transactions nationwide totaling $350m of unlevered equity capital since it was founded in 2010.
Deutsche Bank, HIG’s Bayside Capital and private equity firm AnaCap Financial Partners have together acquired a €495m non-performing and underperforming loan portfolio backed by Romanian property in one of the first examples of loan buyers moving outside overcrowded European markets. The portfolio consists of 3,566 non-performing and under-performing loans secured against residential, retail and other commercial […]
Westfield launched a £750m securitisation today to refinance a £550m loan secured on Stratford City Shopping Centre, which will be the lowest priced European CMBS debt issued since the financial crisis.
Advised by Deutsche Bank and Crédit Agricole and as revealed by Real Estate Capital (1.6.2014), the Australian shopping centre giant decided to refinance the flagship London mall via a CMBS, and the issue is expected to be priced substantially below 100 bps according to one source. It is an agency CMBS meaning a Westfield vehicle rather than the two banks is the issuer; Westfield is also acting on behalf of the centre's joint venture owners.
The existing loan to be refinanced was taken out in 2011 and was thought to have been priced somewhere between 205 and 250 basis points over Libor - a keen margin at the time reflecting the quality of the asset and the sponsors. The previous lowest priced European CMBS since the crisis was the AAA tranche (up to 19% LTV) of the €1.07bn Taurus-2013, which priced at 105bps and was issued in May last year by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, held against a €2bn multi-family German residential portfolio owned by Gagfah.
The £750m single loan collateralising Statford City Shopping Centre No 1 however, is a single tranche, AAA CMBS representing a 38.4% loan-to-value based on a May 2014 valuation of Stratford City by CBRE of c £1.95bn.
It expected that take-up for the five-year CMBS agency loan will come around 60% from the UK with the remainder from Europe and the US.
The loan will refinance the £550m facility put in place in 2011 arranged by Crédit Agricole, HSBC and Eurohypo, which held one-third and syndicated the remainder to Aareal Bank, AXA REIM, Bayern LB, MetLife, Credit Foncier, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank and Santander. The refinancing will allow Westfield and its JV partners to take around £2o0m out of the asset, although around £70m could be used towards an extension and investment into the centre.
The 1.9m sq ft complex is owned by Westfield alongside partners Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Dutch pension fund manager APG. Marketing of the deal will begin this week with pricing expected at the end of the month or the beginning of next month. The centre currently has a 98.9% occupancy rate and a 6.6 years average unexpired lease term to first break.
Deutsche Bank is financing the €160m acquisition of eight Spanish retail assets for GreenOak Real Estate and Grupo Lar in a further sign of lender interest picking up in Spain. The ticket size is believed to be around €100m and the German bank is understood to have beaten several other investment banks to win the […]
Nashville-based Giarratana Development has secured $75.9m in loans for the construction of the SoBro luxury rental apartment tower in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Chicago-based BMO Harris Bank provided a $58m senior construction loan, while New York-based NorthStar Realty Finance – through its lending entity QARTH Holdings NT-II – provided a $17.9m mezzanine loan on the $90.8m project. […]
Crédit Agricole CIB has syndicated a significant portion of the £77m of debt it issued for Perella Weinberg’s purchase of One Poultry in the City, to AXA. The French insurer is thought to have taken at least a 50% participation in the three-year senior loan, equating to a position of about £40m. Perella paid £110m for […]
Wells Fargo Bank has provided a $311.8m loan to finance part of the The Howard Hughes Corporation’s Downtown Summerlin project in Las Vegas, Nevada. The three-year loan has an initial maturity date of 15 July, 2017, with two one-year extensions and an initial interest rate of one-month LIBOR plus 2.25%. The loan will be used […]