GMAC Commercial Mortgages – the world’s biggest property lender, valued at $132bn – is backing former Jones Lang LaSalle directors Maurice Golker and Mark Morris in their investment company Investream’s first UK acquisition, a £150m central London portfolio.
The pair, who until June ran JLL’s private client real estate division and were among the firm’s biggest fee-earners, are believed to have teamed up with GMAC to buy a collection of offices from different vendors in the City and West End. The largest asset in the portfolio is Prudential’s 17,187m2 52-56 Leadenhall Street, 106 Fenchurch Street and 2-5 Fenchurch Buildings – home to the London Metal Exchange and valued at £80m.
The portfolio is also said to include another city building: James Capel House at 6 Bevis Marks, which is owned by Heron. The 9,480m2 former HSBC office is sublet to Alexander Forbes at a rent of around £430 per m2.
This is the first deal for Morris’s and Golker’s Investream, which is buying the portfolio with private investor equity understood to have come from former JLL clients of the duo.
