The sale of £200m of BlackRock assets has been called off after buyers missed deadlines to come up with a satisfactory offer.
JLL was appointed in August to sell the 20 assets in the Project Rio portfolio from BlackRock’s UK Property Fund, which comprises offices, shops and industrial, plus some car showrooms.
Project Rio was rare among a dearth of portfolios on the market because of uncertainty over the price of secondary assets.
But the prospect of a sale faded in the wake of missed deadlines, alongside inflows into BlackRock’s property funds, and successful sales elsewhere.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, had already pulled the attempted £100m sale of the mixed-use 25 Bedford Street, WC2, in September.
That move was linked to the successful sale of Sony Playstation’s European headquarters at 10-12 Great Marlborough Street, W1, to Qatar’s Alduwaliya Asset Management for £104m in an off-market deal.
The cancellation was also a reflection of the improvement in the sector of open-ended funds since they closed and revalued in the wake of the EU vote.
BlackRock did not close its fund, but Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Conditions seem to have eased in terms of selling pressure on open-ended property funds. That suggests the panic for the door we saw in July has abated. That’s not to say it won’t come back at some point.”
BlackRock’s UK Property Fund contains 221 assets, down from 252 in March, with 327 unit holders and a value of £3.1bn as of 31 March 2016. It changed its pricing to withstand pressure, increasing the quarterly redemption cost from 2% to 5.75%, but is back to pre-referendum 2%.
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