FINANCE: Royal Bank of Scotland has provided acquisition finance to Development Securities and Proprium Capital Partners for their £87m purchase of Becket House, SE1.
The lender has provided a five-year facility to the joint venture which bought the long leasehold interest in the 146,000 sq ft office located on Lambeth Road.
The 12-storey building is fully let with 12.5 years of unexpired lease term.
Development Securities is a core client of RBS’ London real estate finance team, while global investment advisory firm Proprium Capital Partners, which has more than $3bn of funds under management, is a new client for the bank.
Paul Eyre, RBS regional managing director, real estate finance, said the bank provided circa £3bn of facilities to clients, both existing and new, over the first half of 2014 and is “enjoying a strong H2 as the economy continues to strengthen”.
The bank has just completed an internal reshuffle of its real estate finance teams, merging the small and medium-sized enterprises property unit, which makes loans under £25m, with the corporate team.
The enlarged team, led by Paul Coates, managing director and head of UK real estate finance, intend to maintain its rate of new lending at £5bn-£6bn pa.
Speaking about the current facility, Eyre said: “It was important to our clients that we provided credit approved terms in 10 days and were then able to fully document the facility ahead of exchange a few weeks later, which we were able to achieve.”
DevSec finance director Marcus Shepherd said: “We have completed a large number of deals over the past few years and have benefitted from our long-term relationship with RBS.
“This latest facility has enabled us to complete a significant transaction in a very tight timescale that offers us a core income stream in the medium-term with some development optionality over the longer term. This proves the benefit of long-term relationship banking.”
