Catalyst Capital and Jamie Ritblat’s Delancey are the front-runners to take on the asset management of a portfolio of Propinvest properties once valued at more than £1bn.
LaSalle Investment Management is also understood to be in the frame to manage the 13 assets, secured by a £900m Royal Bank of Scotland loan, in a mandate codenamed Project Blade.
In a process that is becoming increasingly common across the property sector, the bank and original borrower are looking to bring in new asset managers with skills specific to particular portfolios of assets, in order to help recover value wiped out by the recession.
Similar processes are being run by HSBC, for whom Jones Lang LaSalle is understood to be drawing up a shortlist of preferred managers for the Castlemore assets that were put into administration last year.
Lloyds Banking Group also drafted in Hammerson to complete a series of developments funded by the bank and started by Jason Marcus’s Thornfield.
The RBS/Propinvest portfolio of assets is different in that there is no development element. However, it is understood that the new managers will be tasked with reducing voids and increasing income as much as possible.
RBS provided the debt facility to acquire five of the 13 assets, including the £400m East Kilbride shopping centre and the £120m Mander shopping centre in Wolverhampton, and for the refinancing of seven others.
As revealed by EG (News, 21 November) Ernst & Young’s consultancy arm was tasked last November to find managers for the portfolio.
Catalyst, Delancey and LIM have so far beaten off competition from a number of other shortlisted parties, including Balmain Asset Management and DTZ.
Glen Maud’s Propinvest Asset Management is understood to be retaining an active role in the management of the portfolio.
Maud was recently involved in the restructuring of a separate loan called Gemini, which was secured against 35 assets. Barclays securitised the £1bn loan, £850m of which is outstanding, and sold bonds against the portfolio to investors.
CB Richard Ellis, which services the debt, advised against the sale of assets from the mixed portfolio.
Last November, it brought in Cogent Property Solutions to manage three Scottish retail assets in the Gemini portfolio valued at around £100m.
