Meadowhall may go on the market; Balfour Beatty hails signs of renewed activity in London
London & Stamford, which together with a Middle Eastern partner owns half of the Meadowhall shopping centre near Sheffield, is to put its stake in the mall on the market with a price tag of more than £1.6bn, according to the Sunday Times. The paper says British Land, which owns the other half of Meadowhall, is considering its options, and might also choose to sell its stake.
Interested parties are bound to include overseas sovereign wealth funds. The paper says the sale will be a crucial test of investors’ appetite for prime property. Meadowhall is one of the UK’s largest shopping centres at 1.5m sq ft and has 30m visitors a year, it notes.
Just before Christmas London & Stamford announced the disposal of the Triangle Distribution Portfolio, which comprises 17 distribution properties including the recently acquired 5110 Magna Park in Lutterworth, to a company managed by Blackstone affiliates for £265m. The sale did not include Central Park in Rugby.
Meanwhile, construction group Balfour Beatty today announced several new contract wins and said it was delighted to see “encouraging signs of renewed activity within the London commercial sector”.
The group has won a two-phase contract totalling £57m in the City of London to construct Axa Real Estate’s Sixty London prime office development, and a £25m deal to deliver an 11-storey office property for Viridis Real Estate Service on behalf of its client Emmatown Properties, also in the City. The third deal is an £18m contract for Land Securities in Glasgow, to provide a new five-storey residential and retail scheme at 185-221 Buchanan Street in the city centre.
