GE Asset Management has sold its 13.6% stake in Raymond Mould’s and Patrick Vaughan’s London & Stamford property company.
The investment, which sat in the firm’s venture capital division, not its real estate division, was offloaded for around £74m.
The firm, acting on behalf of the General Electric Pension Trust, originally appointed Credit Suisse to sell a stake of around 9.2%, comprising about 50m ordinary shares.
However, GE said that due to demand received during bookbuilding, it decided to increase the number of shares to be sold to 74m, representing the entirety of the London & Stamford shares held by General Electric Pension Trust.
The shares were sold at 100p per ordinary share.
The news today caused London & Stamford’s shares to drop 11% to 102.5p in early trading, but they had recovered to around 106p – giving the company a market capitalisation of £584m – as Estates Gazette went to press.
GE previously held a 50% stake in L&S’s external management company and the head of its venture capital division, Jim Mara, had a seat on the external company’s board.
This was exchanged for its stake in L&S when management was internalised as part of a restructuring and the company converted to a REIT in 2008. GE did not take a seat on the board of the converted company.
The sale of the stake is understood to have always been anticipated as part of GE’s strategy and comes ahead of Mara’s retirement.
Credit Suisse was sole bookrunner and joint lead manager with Peel Hunt.
