GE Capital Real Estate continues to expand its London-based lending business after being selected to buy Deutsche Postbank’s £1.3bn pool of UK performing property loans.
The subsidiary of General Electric is buying the group of around 50 loans from Deutsche Bank, which owns 93.7% of Postbank, for a discount of less than 5% to face value.
The deal leaves a balance of less than 10 non-performing and sub-performing loans still to be sold by Deutsche Bank for around £250m in the sales project known as Project Tower.
GE Capital beat competition from a final round of bidders comprising Ares Real Estate Group with Citigroup and JP Morgan with Renshaw Bay.
Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, AXA Real Estate, Royal Bank of Canada, Goldman Sachs and M&G Investments also made first round bids.
The Postbank loan purchase is the first major deal under Ellen Brunsberg, who succeeded Ilaria del Beato as UK managing director in April, and is in line with its ambitions to rebuild a senior commercial mortgage lending business.
bridget.o’connell@estatesgazette.com
