Maud buys £400m East Kilbride shopping mall

Glenn Maud’s PropInvest is expanding its holdings in Scotland with the acquisition of the Scottish Retail Property Partnership’s 1.4m sq ft East Kilbride shopping centre. Maud, who last April bought the 185,000 sq ft Paisley shopping centre in Renfrewshire for £48m, has paid close to the £407m asking price – reflecting a 5.25% yield – for the mall. He beat off competition from Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital, which tabled a £380m bid. The deal is one of the largest retail investment transactions to have taken place in Scotland. A spokesman for the SRPP, a joint venture between British Land and Land Securities, said: “We can confirm that we have entered into exclusive discussions with a single purchaser for the East Kilbride shopping centre.” He added: “We have created a great investment product that has more asset management opportunities to exploit. “However, with a strong market for blue-chip retail investments, the partnership believes that the time is right to release its investment and recycle the capital into other activities.” Both LandSec and British Land converted to REITs in January so will not have to pay capital gains tax on the profits released from the sale of the mall. The pair created the East Kilbride mall out of the various schemes they each owned before the partnership was set up in 2004, and then extended it by spending £73m on surrounding shops that have now been integrated into the centre. The jv, which has assets valued at around £665m, also owns the linked 630,000 sq ft Bon Accord and 114,000 St Nicholas centres, in Aberdeen, which are not for sale. Jones Lang LaSalle is advising LandSec and BL.