Aviva Investors has gone under offer to forward fund Imperial College London’s Translation Building, W12, for £150m – £34m above asking.
The 248,000 sq ft block on the university’s 25-acre White City Campus is prelet to the Imperial Bioincubator.
The bioincubator is backed by Imperial Innovations, which helps the commercial development of technology created at UK universities, in joint venture with Imperial College.
It has signed a 25-year lease for the site and intends to provide 50 accelerator units for science start-ups.
Developer Voreda is partnering with Imperial to build the site, which was put up for sale in January for £116m.
Aviva’s acquisition comes two years after it sold an 11.5-acre site to the north of White City Station to Imperial to unlock the wider campus development.
The buy-back of the Translation Building is the latest sign of UK institutional appetite for London assets let to higher -education institutions.
TIAA Henderson Real Estate is under offer to buy Gavrelle House at 2-14 Bunhill Row, EC1, for around £42m – a 5.2% yield – on a sale and leaseback deal with the College of Law.
It follows Schroders’ acquisition of the College of Law’s Bloomsbury campus for £68m in December last year on behalf of a pair of its property funds.
Savills is advising on the sale of the Translation Building; JLL is acting for Aviva and the College of Law.
