LaSalle Investment Management is in exclusive talks to buy the 400,000 sq ft Bexleyheath shopping centre in Kent from the Mall Fund.
The acquisitive fund manager is understood to be paying around £100m – a 7.5% yield -for the centre. It is being bought for LIM’s Merlin UK Property Fund, in which Toronto-based Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has a £200m commitment.
The centre is the first of a number of assets expected to be sold from Capital & Regional’s and Aviva Investors’ Mall Fund.
Sources said that they expected three more shopping centres to be put up for sale in the coming months.
The sale of Bexleyheath is the first by the fund since it sold three centres – in Chester, Epsom in Surrey, and Edgware in north London -to Bride Hall and Carlyle Group for £286m in July 2008.
CB Richard Ellis is advising the Mall; Jones Lang LaSalle is acting for LIM.
- Bradford & Bingley has instructed GVA Grimley to sell the 226,000 sq ft Derry’s Cross shopping centre in Plymouth, Devon, for £20m – a 9% yield.
