Acquired for around £100m in 2013, 125 Shaftesbury Avenue provided us with short-term income and longer-term development opportunities to extract greater value. It boasted 189,000 sq ft of office space, a prime West End location, and excellent transport links, which were set to get even better with the arrival of Crossrail and the new Tottenham Court Road station. In 2017, after the expiry of the existing leasehold agreements, these qualities helped us to secure a letting deal for almost the entire site with WeWork – a deal which in 2018 added value to our sale of the building to South Korea’s KB Securities for £267m.
125 Shaftesbury Avenue
Approximate site area: 1.2 acres
Total area: 189,000 sq ft
Sectors: Commercial and retail
CAA House
Situated just to the east of Covent Garden, CAA House offers eight storeys of office space on Kingsway and fifteen on Kemble Street – a combined area of almost 230,000 sq ft in a prized part of London where office space is in short supply. Aware that the lease held on the building by the Civil Aviation Authority was due to expire in 2019, which would leave it ripe for development, we acquired the site in 2012 for £110m. We then sold it for £165m in 2018, freeing up equity for further acquisitions.
Approximate site area: 0.9 acre
Total area: 229,164 sq ft
Sectors: Commercial