The billionaire Issa brothers are on the verge of selling a £500m chunk of Asda real estate to Macquarie Asset Management.
The Australian finance house is close to buying ground rent leases linked with about 50 Asda stores in Britain.
Mohsin and Zuber Issa, backed by private equity firm TDR Capital, bought the supermarket chain from Walmart in 2020 in a £6.8bn, debt-fuelled deal. They are targeting sale-and-leaseback transactions for the grocer’s estate to try to bring down its debt.
Under the Macquarie deal, the leases would last for 50 years, with a provision included to allow Asda to reassume ownership for a nominal amount at the end of the term. The structure would result in Asda paying a relatively low rent while allowing it to raise a large amount of equity.
The store disposal comes after US investor Realty Income Corporation bought 25 stores from Asda in a £650m sale-and-leaseback transaction earlier in the year.
Asda owns about 75% of its 580 sites.
