Threadneedle is close to buying SEGRO’s last remaining UK regional multilet sheds portfolio for around £170m – a circa 8% yield.
The asset manager is understood to have edged ahead of F&C REIT in what had become a two-horse race to buy the 3m sq ft Galahad portfolio.
Bids for the portfolio of 17 estates spread across the country also came from Mountgrange Capital and Valad Property Group.
The non-core properties, which include sites in Derby, Bristol and Runcorn, provide an annual rent of £14.7m.
A source said: “There is a really strong appetite at the moment for good income-producing assets like these.”
Threadneedle and PRUPIM both made unsuccessful offers for some of the assets before Christmas.
SEGRO announced plans to sell off £1.6bn of its non-core properties in November last year. The industrial REIT wants to reinvest cash raised from the sales in sheds at major transport hubs across the UK and Europe.
Some £1bn of the sales will have come from the disposal of multi-let industrial parks, about half from UK regions. The rest of the non-core assets are in Europe.
US private equity firm Harbert Management has already agreed to buy the 5m sq ft Merlin portfolio and 125-acre IQ –Farnborough business park in Hampshire. Those sales will raise about £300m.
Ignis Asset Management, meanwhile, has bought five industrial estates totalling 805,000 sq ft for £80.2m – a yield of 6.3%.
The last remaining SEGRO UK asset on the market is the 317,000 sq ft Sapphire Campus in Crawley, West Sussex, let to French defence giant Thales. It is being marketed by DTZ for £90.5m – a yield of 6.5%.
Jones Lang LaSalle is acting for Threadneedle; CBRE is advising SEGRO.
nick.whitten@estatesgazette.com
