The Issa brothers are on the verge of selling off a £650m chunk of Asda’s property empire to a US investor.
Following a “competitive” bidding process, New York-headquartered Realty Income Corporation is said to be close to buying about 25 Asda stores on leases of up to 20 years. The price tag equates to a net initial yield of about 6.5%.
Realty Income Corporation made its UK debut buying £429m of Sainsbury’s property in 2019. Since then, it has bought retail parks, supermarkets and logistics units in the UK.
Mohsin and Zuber Issa, who bought the supermarket giant in 2020 with the private equity firm TDR Capital, are targeting sale-and-leaseback transactions to bring down the hefty debt pile amid soaring interest rates.
The Issa-owned forecourts business, EG Group, sold 415 US assets for $1.5bn to Realty Income in a sale-and-leaseback deal in March.
