Marylebone Warwick Balfour Goup Plc - Mixed-Use Sale - London W1, Marble Arch Tower
Date: 03 Jan 2001
Marylebone Warwick Balfour Goup Plc ("MWB")today announces it has exchanged contracts to aquire the 90-year leasehold interest in Marble Arch Tower, a central London 161,500 sq ft office, leisure and retail complex, from Regalian Properties PLC ("Regalian") for a total of £69.2m cash.
Prominently located at the junction of Marble Arch, Edgware Road and Oxford Street, this landmark building has been the subject of a major refurbishment programme enabling the office element to be designed as a "Business Village". Marble Arch Tower now satisfies the demands of modern office space o cupiers through the provision of serviced office accomodation, flexible and conventional leases.
The building comprises approximately 95,000 sq ft Odeon Cinema and 23,000 sq t of retail space. The complex will generate total net annual rents of approximately £5.6m when the purchase is completed in March 2001. Income is then anticipated to rise to £6.3m by the end of 2001. At the purchase price this reflects a net yield of 9%.
Annual Income and cashflow from the building will continue to rise as the amount of space devoted to serviced offices and flexi-leases inreases following the expiry of a number of conventional leases.
It is anticipated that within 12 months MWB Business Exchange will take over the operating and management of both the serviced and flexi-lease office space at Marble Arch Tower from Regus.
The fully let office elements generates £4.8m of annual rent income from a wide range of tenants, including Abbeyy National and Nokia UK Ltd, while the leisure and retail produces a further £0.8m. Apart fromn Odeon Cinemas, occupiers include JD Wetherspoon and J Sainsbury. One retail unit is vacant and another is under offer.
Richard Balfour-Lynn, MWB's Chief Executive, said;
"The purchase of this landmark building at Marble Arch complements our stated strategy of aquiring properties with great potential to be further developed into cashflow businesses. The office element has similar characteristics to our highly successful 150,000 sq ft Cannon Street Centre in the heart of the City.
"Marble Arch Tower has already been partly converted into a serviced office complex of more than 33,000 sq ft with further potential to provide a significant amount of flexi-lease seviced acommodation to large corporate occupiers seeking quality well located space supported by state-of-the-art IT and telecommunications.
The aquisition is being financed by £58.2m of senior debt, £10.5m of mezzanine finance and £3.6m from the Group's own resources.
This latest purchase completes an extremely active and succesful year for MWB. Since Jan 2000 MWB has further expanded its serviced office business both in the UK and Europe; dramatically expanded its hotel operations through the aquisition of the Howard Hotel and the Malmaison chain for a total of £120m; aquired the Liberty department store group for £74m; grown its property development, investment and trading activities with more than £1450m of acquisitions;, and, last month, completed an oversubscribed and highly sucesful £62m placing and open offer.
Where do I go now?: » View the latest news items » View the news archive » Subscribe to Weekly Property Newsletter » Submit news
