Oxenwood sets sights on Ultrabox

Oxenwood Real Estate is in exclusive talks to buy Lone Star and Anglesea Capital’s Project Ultrabox logistics portfolio for around £285m. It will be the largest deal for the company since being established by former LondonMetric directors Stewart Little and Jeremy Bishop. The initial £280m asking price reflected a 6.5% yield. Oxenwood has secured backing from a Canadian pension fund. It has connections in Canada, having previously teamed up with Catalina -Holdings, a Bermuda-based reinsurance firm backed by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, the Caisse (parent of Ivanhoé Cambridge) and Apollo.     The nine-asset, 3.8m sq ft Ultrabox portfolio received strong bids from six investors from Singapore, the US, Australia and South Africa. The bulk of the portfolio emerged from a deal put together in 2014 that saw joint venture partners Anglesea and Lone Star buy four assets from Goodman, totalling 2.4m sq ft, in Wolverhampton, Swansea, Daventry and Gloucester. A further three sites were bought from Goodman and developed speculatively, retaining the seller as development manager in Derby, Andover and Kingsnorth, totalling 930,000 sq ft. They were subsequently asset managed by Anglesea. A further two assets were added to Ultrabox from Lone Star’s 2015 Project Churchill portfolio, bought from Aviva for £2.2bn.    Lone Star’s initial investment was made through its $7bn (£5.7bn) Lone Star Real Estate Fund III, which held a final close in 2013, was fully invested by mid-2015 and is now divesting assets. The fund’s other investments included the £1bn Project Laser portfolio bought from Moorfield, from which the private equity firm is in the process of selling a stake in Brindleyplace in Birmingham to HSBC Alternative Investments as part of a £260m deal. Dowley Turner Real Estate is selling the portfolio; JLL is acting for Oxenwood. • To send feedback, e-mail david.hatcher@estatesgazette.com or tweet @hatcherdavid or @estatesgazette