CGNU and Hermes have bought the Guardian Assurance stake in the £1.12bn Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent in a £25m-plus deal.
Equity Partnerships advised Guardian Assurance, now part of Scottish Equitable, on the sale of its stake in the Lend Lease Retail Partnership. Both CGNU and Hermes are members of the Partnership, and they acquired the stake via pre-emption rates.
They trumped an external bid from a collection of four discretionary pension fund clients of Baring Houston & Saunders. It is understood that their offer represented a premium of around 10% to the stake’s NAV.
Equity Partnerships managing director Paul Oliver said that, although the sale attracted good interest, the pre-emption process may have limited the undisclosed price achieved by the sale.
He said: “The pre-emption process is a nonsense. However, despite this, substantial interest was shown by the open market. We believe that without pre-emption, the process of liquidity would have been much smoother and could have resulted in an even higher premium being paid.”
Julia Martin, the Guardian Life fund manager, said: “We are delighted to have achieved a substantial premium over the June NAV. It remains to be seen what we could have achieved if we had been allowed a full unfettered marketing of the units.”
CGNU was advised by CB Hillier Parker.
03/08/00
