Liverpool’s largest office block to list on IPSX

Starwood is planning to list Liverpool’s biggest office building on IPSX. Trinistar Liverpool, a controlled affiliate of the $95bn Starwood Capital Group, has appointed advisers to explore a potential listing for the Capital Building. The newly formed single-asset company, which is managed by Trinity Investment Management, will own the 425,000 sq ft office block overlooking the Liverpool waterfront. Once the Capital Building is admitted to IPSX it will be converted to a REIT. The building, which occupies a 3.5-acre freehold site in the centre of Liverpool’s business district, is 82% let to five tenants, including the Home Office and insurance giant RSA, with an average of 22 years left to run on the leases. Starwood and Trinity, which also owns a small stake, have refurbished close to 150,000 sq ft of office space since buying the building four years ago, and are in the process of creating a new, three-level atrium. Trinity intends to retain its minority stake in the building and will continue to be engaged as the manager. IPSX, the world’s first exchange dedicated to the initial public offering and secondary market trading of commercial real estate assets, currently hosts the Mailbox REIT with a second listing from M7 is in the pipeline Federico Bianchi, head of asset management for Europe at Starwood, said: “We have followed the development of IPSX with interest and most recently following the successful listing and subsequent performance of the Mailbox REIT. We believe IPSX offers the dual benefits of providing an important new capital markets option for institutional property owners such as ourselves, as well as providing investors with the opportunity to own shares in a single asset company that owns large high-quality real estate that are traded daily on a liquid exchange.” Bianchi added: “Having undertaken a number of asset management initiatives over the past few years, we believe that the proposed listing on IPSX would allow us to conclude our business plan for the Capital Building while allowing new investors to benefit from the long-term secure income streams from tenants, as well as the potential value creation from the asset management initiatives that have either concluded or are ongoing.” Discover which agents are transacting the most space in the Liverpool office market >>  To send feedback, e-mail piers.wehner@eg.co.uk or tweet @PiersWehner or @EGPropertyNews Photo from Image capitalliverpool.co.uk