British Land Sells Ropemaker Place, London EC2

RNS Number : 7519Z

British Land Co PLC

12 March 2013

 



12 March 2013

British Land Sells Ropemaker Place, EC2 to a consortium represented by

AXA Real Estate Investment Managers

British Land announces that it has sold Ropemaker Place, London EC2 to Frasia Properties S.à r.l. and Frasia Properties Subsidiary S.à r.l., which are subsidiaries of a UK Real Estate Investment Trust structure, for a gross sale price of £472 million. The purchasers are an international consortium of investors and were represented by AXA Real Estate Investment Managers. British Land will top up the rent frees to the contractual rent of £24.05 million per annum.  The sale represents a net initial yield of 5.0% on the basis of an acquisition of the units in Ropemaker Place Unit Trust.

The offices are fully let on an average lease length of 14 years, with key tenants including The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd and Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc, Markit, Liberum Capital and Macquarie Group, at a day one contractual rent of £24.05 million per annum, rising to £27.5 million per annum on minimum uplifts at first reviews.  At 30 September 2012, Ropemaker Place was valued at £455 million, with current passing rents of £0.9 million and accounting rent of £21 million.

British Land will receive net proceeds of £461 million in cash from the sale after costs, 1.4% above the September 2012 book value.

The sale is in line with our strategy of recycling capital and balancing our portfolio between the West End and the City - the West End now accounts for half our London Office portfolio (from 46%). The proceeds of the sale will be redeployed into our existing London development programme.

Tim Roberts, Head of Offices at British Land said: "Ropemaker demonstrates our track record of delivering exceptional, sustainable buildings which are profitably let to quality occupiers. The sale reflects the attractiveness of our buildings to investors as well as occupiers and allows us to recycle capital to invest in our development programme."

Jones Lang LaSalle and SJ Berwin acted for British Land on the sale.

Enquiries:

Investor Relations

Sally Jones, British Land                                                020 7467 2942

Media

Pip Wood, British Land                                                   020 7467 2838

Guy Lamming, Finsbury Group/                                       020 7251 3801

Gordon Simpson, Finsbury Group

Notes to Editors

About Ropemaker Place

Designed by Arup Associates and developed by British Land in 2009, Ropemaker Place is one of the City of London's highest quality and most sustainable buildings, providing over 595,000 sq ft of flexible office accommodation. Located on Ropemaker Street and Finsbury Street in the City of London, the property incorporates over 50,000 sq ft of planted roof terraces, is rated BREEAM "Excellent" and was the first building in Europe to achieve pre-certification for LEED "Platinum".

About British Land

British Land is one of Europe's largest Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) with total assets, owned or managed, of £16.3 billion (British Land share £10.4 billion), as valued at 30 September 2012. Through our property and finance expertise we attract experienced partners to create properties and environments which are home to over 1,000 different organisations and receive over 300 million visits each year. Our property portfolio is focused on prime retail locations and Central London offices which attract high quality occupiers committed to long leases. Our occupancy rate of 97.7% and average lease length to first break of 11 years are among the highest of the major UK REITs.

Retail assets account for 60% of our portfolio with around 28 million sq ft of retail space across 82 retail parks, 92 superstores, 13 shopping centres and 9 department stores. The retail portfolio is modern, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of formats and our active asset management delivers space which is attractive and meets the needs of both retailers and consumers. 80% of our retail parks have open A1 consent.

London offices, located in the City and West End, comprise 35% of the portfolio (which will rise to an estimated 40% on completion of current developments). Our 7 million sq ft of high quality offices includes Broadgate, the premier City office campus (50% share) and Regent's Place in the West End. Over the last 2 years, we have committed £1.2 billion to create Central London's largest committed office development programme which will deliver 2.3 million sq ft of high quality space by 2014, including a 700,000 sq ft building at 5 Broadgate, the 610,000 sq ft Leadenhall Building in London's insurance district and a 500,000 sq ft mixed office and residential scheme at Regent's Place in the West End.

Managing our environmental, economic and social impacts is central to the way we do business and deliver value for our shareholders. We assess the issues that matter most to us and our stakeholders on an on-going basis and, where appropriate, adjust our strategic focus to reflect this. We focus on managing our buildings efficiently, supporting communities, developing sustainable buildings and engaging our staff. For each of these priorities we are targeting our efforts and resources at initiatives where we can achieve the biggest impacts.

Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com.

 

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