Madame Tussauds, NW1
Type of deal Investment
Seller Secure Income REIT
Buyer Fubon Life
Price £332.5m
Chris Berkin, EG’s West End correspondent, says: May saw not only one of the largest, but one of the most glamorous West End deals of recent years. Fubon Life’s £332.5m purchase of the world-famous Madame Tussauds waxwork museum, NW1, represented the continuation of Taiwan’s love affair with London trophies. It followed the £222.4m Taiwanese purchase, fronted by UBS Global Asset Management, of 95 Wigmore Street, W1. Nick Leslau’s and Mike Brown’s Secure Income REIT is selling the tourist attraction as part of an ongoing refinancing process, seeking to raise around £700m of fresh debt. Before the Tussauds sale, SIREIT’s gearing stood at about 70% on its £1.6bn portfolio. Fubon saw off four bids over £320m to follow Sunrider’s £185m purchase of the St Ermin’s hotel in Victoria, SW1, earlier this year.
London Fruit & Wool Exchange, E1
Type of deal Prelet
Occupier Ashurst
Developer M&G Real Estate and Exemplar
Size 320,000 sq ft
Jack Sidders, EG’s news editor, says: Ashurst’s prelet of the entire London Fruit & Wool Exchange in Spitalfields, E1, is significant for several reasons. It is the largest City prelet recorded in the year to date, and while the leasing market remains patchy, the supply remains constrained so a deal of this size will actively move the needle. Ashurst’s decision to opt for Fruit & Wool over other, perhaps, more obvious options at Broadgate, where it is a tenant, demonstrates the increasing importance occupiers are attaching to location. Meanwhile, M&G has once again demonstrated how UK institutions can compete with overseas trophy buyers willing to pay very sharp yields and still get its hands on well-let prime stock – by backing some of the best developers in the business.
Berkeley homes in on W12
Berkeley Group’s St James’ has secured planning permission for its £615m White City, W12, mixed-use scheme, which will include 1,465 homes.
Office construction up
Office construction in London has soared to its second-highest level in 20 years, according to research by Deloitte Real Estate.
Centrepoint aims for the top
Almacantar has put a £55m price tag on the five-bedroom duplex penthouse apartment at the top of its Centrepoint office-to-residential conversion.
Brookfield has announced it will go ahead and speculatively build its 900,000 sq ft tower, 100 Bishopsgate, EC2.
SFO forces sale of homes
The Serious Fraud Office has forced the sale of two homes in order to recoup money earned from two separate financial cases.
Boroughs miss housing targets
New research shows that nearly half of London’s boroughs are missing their housing targets.
People, politics and peculiarities
GVA poaches christie director
It’s mainly about politics this month, but in a bit of people news Bilfinger GVA has been poaching from Christie + Co, luring its director of hotel’s David Creamore into its own hotels and leisure division.
London needs a nerd
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has offered up his opinion on who he thinks should replace Boris Johnson when voting opens in the mayoral elections (334 days to go). Speaking at MIPIM Japan, he said whoever they are they need to be a “nerd”.
Perhaps he’s been reading our assessment of potential candidates in last month’s EG London in which it was suggested by one commentator that the time for “big personalities’’ was over.
Councils join forces against revamp
Islington and Camden borough councils, in a rare show of solidarity, have applied for a judicial review into mayor Boris Johnson’s decision to back the redevelopment of the Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant site on Farringdon Road, EC1. The councils feel the developers should be providing more affordable housing.
Lister calls for more say on S106
And while we are talking of housing, deputy mayor Edward Lister (above) has called for the Mayor’s Office to have a bigger role in determining s106 agreements. He believes such power will assist in delivery of much-needed housing.
Labour urges KCL plans rethink
Labour councillors at Westminster council have urged the new secretary of state to call in King’s College London’s plans for a new development at its Strand campus. Labour is citing a number of objections to the scheme, including from the Ancient Monument Society, the Victorian Society and the Somerset House Trust.
What’s in a name?
You know how Londoners like to give iconic buildings snappy, easy to remember, visually reflective nick-names: the Gherkin; Walkie Talkie; Cheesegrater, etc? Well, you’d think the Shard would be one of the few that has managed to get away with being remembered by its actual name; everyone knows what the distinctive tower at London Bridge is called, right? Apparently not, because if you type “tall pointy thing” into Google Maps it pinpoints the Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper. Wonder if it will catch on as a nickname?
