Lloyds Bank this week earmarked its second loan portfolio since the end of last year for Cerberus Capital by naming the investor the preferred bidder for its £537m Project Thames.
In December Cerberus bought a £150m loan portfolio secured against property including the 600,000 sq ft Quorum Business Park in Newcastle.
The latest sale would take Lloyds’ reduction in non-core UK property loans to nearly £3bn this year, taking the bank’s legacy loans still to be sold to less than £10bn. The biggest asset in Project Thames – initially called Project Wagner – is the 390,000 sq ft Capital Building in Liverpool, valued at just over £40m.
Before Project Thames, the loan portfolio deals completed this year included two Irish portfolios: Project Pittsburgh, sold to CarVal for €95m (£80m), and Project Lane, sold to Apollo for £1.46bn at an 89% discount, as well as the €850m German Project Chamonix, sold to Marathon Asset Management at just over a 50% discount.
Lloyds has cut its property loan book by more than half of its £20bn level in 2009.
? Praxis Real Estate is likely to be the buyer of the Brittanica Fund of seven secondary UK shopping centres, paying just over £250m to Grant Thornton, the fund’s receiver. The closest rival to Praxis was Kennedy Wilson but others including PIMCO and JP Morgan all bid under £250m. A price of £250m for Project Panther, as it has been named, reflects a 9% yield.
david.harris@estatesgazette.com
