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 […]
Dutch financial group ING has launched a debt investment service to build bespoke portfolios of commercial real estate loans for institutional investors. “This new and unique proposition allows ING REF to leverage its origination and lending capabilities to bridge the gap in the market between capital providers looking for attractive spread products, and real estate […]
Barclays has provided financing at a margin as tight as 175 basis points for low leverage on “good quality kit” for its long-standing client, Tritax. The bank has issued three separate loans totalling £85m for Tritax’s new REIT, Tritax Big Box REIT, listed last December, to re-gear the purchase of UK distribution centres in the East […]
ING Bank has provided €120m of finance for Round Hill Capital’s purchase of the largest Dutch residential portfolio to trade since the financial crisis. The five-year debt reflects a loan-to-value ratio of 66%. ING has syndicated some of the debt to two non-Dutch insitutional players. Round Hill has acquired 1,534 units spanning 140,000 sq m for […]
Legal & General has provided its second loan to the social housing sector this year – a £50m facility to support Housing Solutions’ six-year pipeline of 1,600 affordable homes across the South East. The 40-year debt reflects an all-in cost of sub 5%. Typical loan asset cover levels in the sector are around 105%. L&G’s […]