CAPITAL WATCH: Recent lending deals

Real Estate Capital market commentary

• The largest deal closed was the £620m provided by Lloyds Bank, Barclays, HSBC and Qatar National Bank for Canary Wharf Group’s development of 1.6m sq ft of mainly residential space at the site formerly known as Wood Wharf. The loan, reportedly for five-and a-half years, has a margin of just over 300bps. In March, a £200m Homes & Communities Agency loan was secured for infrastructure.

• King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership has secured further development funding at its 67-acre London site with a £215m facility from Barclays. Part of the two-loan funding will be used to develop further retail, leisure, residential and office space. It will also refinance offices in the scheme’s Western Transit Shed, north of Regent’s Canal.

• DekaBank continued its long-standing relationship with Stenprop by writing three loans for the South African investor, totalling
over £102m. It provided £37.5m for the acquisition of 25 Argyll Street in London, formerly Regent Arcade House; refinanced a
City of London office building with a £37.4m facility; and refinanced its own loan secured on London’s Euston House, providing £27.5m.
• The largest single-lender deal was Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s £350m, five-year facility for Goldman Sachs’ and Greystar’s
acquisition of the Westbourne student housing portfolio from Knightsbridge Student Housing. The £500m price for the 12-asset, 5,867-bed portfolio reflects a 70% loan-to-value ratio and a margin of around 200bps.
• In Europe, pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank remained busy in the run-up to its public listing, slated for July, with four deals totalling €267m. It supplied Evoreal with a €124m loan to develop flats in Munich; provided a €58m, five-year facility for IFM Immobilien’s office development in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt; supplied €25m for the MCAP Global Finance and Industrial Securities Europe joint-venture acquisition of two French light industrial portfolios; and, with Unicredit Bank Austria, lent Lone Star €120m for five years to buy a Central and Eastern European portfolio.
• ING Real Estate Finance continued its investment in Eastern Europe with a €185m, six-year refinancing for Blue City shopping
centre, owned by Dutch investor Singspiel Investeringen, in Warsaw. In March, the bank refinanced the Bonarka City Centre mall in Krakow with a €193m loan.
• Long-term loans from Aviva and L&G on social housing and care homes respectively continued the growing interest in alternative asset classes. Aviva provided a £44.3m, 40-year development facility, at a 2.05% all-in cost, to Genesis Housing Association, secured by 307 homes in England. L&G provided a £50m, 25-year loan to Sanctuary Group, secured against a portfolio of care homes.

Click here to see tables of May and June 2015 deals