India Broadband Forum

India Broadband Internet

The landmark Covent Garden market piazza, including the market itself, has been sold for 421 million pounds ($802.8 million), the joint owners of one of the city's biggest tourist attractions said on Monday.

Capital & Counties, a subsidiary of Liberty International Plc, bought 31 properties covering 450,000 square foot off the Covent Garden Market Limited Partnership (CGMLP), from fund managers Henderson Global Investors and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership.

In a statement, John Saggers, managing director of Capital & Counties, said the investment played to the strengths of Liberty given its focus on high-quality retail assets of scarcity value.

Liberty is the country's third-biggest listed property firm and is seen as likely to convert into a real estate investment trust (REIT) -- a low-tax format prevalent in many other countries, which is being introduced for UK property firms on Jan 1. 2007.

Liberty also owns high-profile shopping centres such as Lakeside, to the east of London, and the MetroCentre in northeast England.

A spokesman for CGMLP said the deal had been at an initial yield of 3.8 percent but was unable to put a figure on the profit made on the deal because the portfolio had been put together over a period of time and significantly redeveloped.

"At the beginning of this year we felt that such was the level of demand from both UK and overseas investors for quality assets such as Covent Garden Market that we could obtain a premium price," another spokesperson said in a statement.

"Though there is clearly a lot of potential in the area we felt the time was right for us to realise our investment and sell the properties," he said.

Initial yields measure a property's net rental income in relation to its purchase price. They are inversely related to price, much like bonds, and have fallen below the cost of funding, especially in central London.

Commercial property yields on average fell to a 33-year low of 5.1 percent last quarter, according to property services firm CB Richard Ellis. That compares with a current five-year interest rate swap rate of around 5.21 percent.

Dante

ahhhhhhhhhh............


i wish i owned that place...........lol

azeemi

Why you don't want to buy this.......... lol.