Bank of America Merrill Lynch has syndicated around a third of the €130m mezzanine debt secured against the Coeur Défense tower in Paris to Austrian bank BAWAG. BAML underwrote a €935m whole loan in February for Lone Star’s €1.3bn purchase of the iconic building. The five-year refinancing was structured as a 60% LTV senior loan and a mezzanine […]
Austrian bank BAWAG has acquired £50m of a £225m loan Lloyds made to Aviva Investors and Quintain’s Quercus Healthcare Property Partnership – the largest UK institutional care home property fund. BAWAG typically provides finance at around 50% leverage and a margin of around 400 basis points. This marks its first healthcare loan in the UK […]
European banks are now well through the process of deleveraging their property books, DTZ said today at the launch of the firm’s Money into Property report for 2014. In the UK this has driven down the volume of total invested stock (equity and debt) by 6% by the end of 2013, as loans sold at […]
Helical Bar is the latest of a string of property companies to raise capital by issuing convertible bonds at a high premium to share price and NAV. The listed developer and investor run by Mike Slade yesterday raised a total £100m, exceeding its target by £15m. “Issuing a convertible of £100m or below can be a […]
UK REIT British Land is in the market looking for around £300m of debt to refinance a retail portfolio held by one of its Tesco joint ventures. It is thought to be looking to put together a consortium of lenders to provide debt at low leverage and pricing is expected to be tighter than 150 basis […]
George Soros has entered the bidding for Catalunya Bank’s €6.5bn Hercules portfolio of loans, according to Spanish newspaper Expansion. He has teamed up with alternative investment manager Varde Partners. The bulk of the 111,000 loans are on residential property, mostly in Catalonia; 43% are non-performing and 15% are sub-performing: in default for less than […]
Nassar Hussain’s Brookland Partners has sold a stake in the boutique debt advisory firm to hedge fund Omni Partners. This will allow it to look at new real estate debt strategies – potentially an origination fund. Omni Partners has experience raising capital with institutional investors, with a number of funds under management totaling $650m of […]
A line up of at least seven or eight banks are in the bidding process to finance the Sanctuary Buildings in Victoria, SW1. The buyer of the 227,000 sq ft office block on Great Smith Street – private equity firm Henley Investments – is seeking a total £135m of debt for a term of three […]
Citibank has financed Blackstone’s acquisition of a logistics portfolio in France and Germany at a margin in the region of 300 basis points. Its €350m loan represented a 75% LTV against the €473m purchase from French investor Foncière des Régions. The 17 assets are financed for the next five years. Another recent European logistics financing is Blackstone Real Estate […]
AgFe, the debt asset management firm, has raised £1.4bn of capital for investment in senior commercial mortgages in two new UK funds and is on course to raise £2bn. Retirement specialist LV= has mandated AgFe to invest up to £1bn into investment grade mortgages over the next four years in the friendly society’s first move […]