Bank of America Merrill Lynch is to finance the €900m (£711m) Finnish expansion of Blackstone’s Logicor platform.
The bank will finance Logicor’s purchase of the majority shareholding in Certeum, a business that owns 14m sq ft of logistics assets across Finland.
BAML will provide a €575m loan over five years, which reflects a 64% loan-to-cost on the controlling stake.
The loan is backed by 122 different assets, of which 75% are near the main cities of Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
The portfolio includes a trophy asset, the 871,000 sq ft logistics park in Vuosaari harbour in Helsinki.
It also marks continued expansion of the Logicor arm into the Nordic region after the €3bn purchase of the Obligo portfolio by parent Blackstone in July last year. Nearly a third of the portfolio’s assets were industrial.
The BAML loan is one of the largest financings agreed in Europe since the start of the year as the market picks up after a slowdown prompted by further turmoil in Asian and Middle Eastern markets and Brexit fears.
It is also the third major loan provided by BAML to the US private equity giant over the past 12 months. Last summer BAML loaned more than €700m across two deals to Blackstone, with €335m going to finance the purchase of Kingfisher stores in Germany and a further €367m to finance the purchase of GE Capital’s French portfolio.
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