Cain Hoy and QIA team up for £450m Canary Wharf development financing

Cain Hoy, the real estate investor and lender, has teamed up with Qatar Investment Authority to provide a £450 million financing of a 27-storey office tower development in London’s Docklands.

The loan has been provided to Canary Wharf Group to fund the construction of One & Five Bank Street, a 715,000 square feet commercial scheme which has been majority-let to the French banking group Société Générale.

Cain Hoy, which is led by Jonathan Goldstein and John Cole, is providing 75 percent of the loan, with the remainder funded by QIA. The deal is thought to be the largest UK development financing to be agreed so far this year.

In April 2015, QIA, in a joint venture with Canadian investor Brookfield Property Partners, completed the acquisition of Canary Wharf Group through a £2.6 billion acquisition of majority shareholder Songbird Estates.

The financing deal is indicative of the partnership approach which Cain Hoy favours in its real estate activity, said Cole, managing director of Cain Hoy. “This development loan highlights our confidence in the continued appeal of the London office market and our commitment to supporting developers with a one-stop source for big-ticket loans at a time when some traditional lenders are being more conservative,” he added.

One & Five Bank Street contains three levels of trading floors, a retail unit at ground floor and a new public promenade along Canary Wharf’s South Dock. The scheme is designed by architect Kohn Pedersen Fox and is due to complete in early 2019. Société Générale has pre-let 40 percent of the building, with 359,000 square feet still being marketed.

“The Cain Hoy team has a strong reputation and we are pleased to have worked with them and QIA to secure this significant loan which enables us to push ahead with this exciting scheme,” commented Paul Stallard, group treasurer of Canary Wharf Group.

Cain Hoy has previously financed development projects in the London market. In October 2016, it provided a £78 million loan to Lodha Group to back its Lincoln Square residential project, located in the Holborn area of the UK capital, which is to provide 202 apartments.

In October 2014, it provided a £390 million facility for Almacantar’s forward purchase of One and Two Southbank Place on the River Thames, for a 1.5 million square feet redevelopment of the Shell Centre site into a new headquarters for the oil firm and a speculative office scheme. The development is being carried out by Braeburn Estates, a joint venture between Canary Wharf Group and Qatari Diar.

One of the company’s first debt deals was a £125 million development loan for Delancey to finance Here East, the private equity firm’s redevelopment of the giant broadcasting centre in Stratford used for the 2012 London Olympic Games.