Cornerstone is on track to lend £300m by the end of the year and expand its European debt platform after completing its second London-led deal.
The subsidiary of US giant Mass Mutual said it had further transactions totalling around £70m in hand after this week closing a £150m senior debt financing with UK & European Investments.
The new fixed-rate, nine- and 11-year £150m loan facility with the Lewis Trust Group’s property arm has a weighted average unexpired lease term of 9.8 years.
It is secured against a six-strong portfolio of London and South East properties and has a loan to value ratio of around 56%.
It comes almost a year after the firm’s maiden £83m loan to Derwent London, which was also a long-term fixed-rate facility.
Cornerstone’s chief investment officer, Nick Pink, said that while both these deals were completed on behalf of a “North American source of capital”, ?he was keen to add more ?clients to its books and look at higher-yielding opportunities such as stretched senior or junior lending and floating-rate loans.
Pink said much of the past year “has been spent educating the market on what we can offer and the particular issues with longer-term fixed-rate lending”. He expects the firm to complete a similar amount of business in its second year, but would like to see £1bn of ?lending in the “short to medium term”.
The firm’s 12-month exclusivity contract with originator Laxfield Capital, which advised on the UK & European deal, has come to an end and origination will now be undertaken by former RBS banker Chris Bates, who joined Cornerstone in July.
? Standard Life has announced it is entering the commercial real estate debt market, initially running a £250m segregated mandate on behalf of Standard Life Assurance.
bridget.oconnell@estatesgazette.com
