Volkswagen has raised £300m by selling 90 UK freehold properties to Royal Bank of Scotland Structured Finance.
The German car giant, whose share price fell last year amid declining profits, wants to release cash by selling the car dealership sites and taking 25-year leases with no breaks (14 February, p22). VW’s freehold 200,000 sq ft headquarters in Milton Keynes is not part of the deal.
RBS beat the Zakay brothers’ Topland, which completed a £650m sale-and-leaseback deal with Tesco last week, as well as Rotch and London & Regional to the deal with VW.
RBS has previously tended to carry out sale-and-leasebacks in the hotel sector. In 2001, it completed a £312m deal involving 11 Hilton hotels and teamed up with Japanese investment bank Nomura for the £1.5bn sale-and-leaseback of the Meridien chain.
The VW Group in the UK handles vehicles from the VW range, as well as from VW Commercial Vehicles, Seat, Skoda and Audi.
