Goldman secures £110m Marble

The 4m sq ft portfolio comprised 109 assets located across England, Wales and Scotland with an annual rent roll of £11.6m. Industrial assets account for 80% of the portfolio by income, with the remaining 20% comprising retail and offices.

The portfolio was being sold by KPMG on behalf of VBRi and secured creditor Nationwide Building Society.

VBRi had assembled the portfolio over the past three years, supported by Nationwide debt.  M7 Real Estate was the appointed asset manager for the portfolio and worked closely with KPMG in selling the portfolio. Goldman Sachs were able to close the transaction within 4 weeks of being appointed preferred bidder in mid-December.

Stephen Barter, chairman of real estate advisory at KPMG, said: “The ‎sale attracted strong competition from leading players during a very busy transaction period within the UK market. Our process was accelerated by being able to prepare a rigorously diligenced dataset at the outset and by the depth and breadth of our investor relationships.”

A spokesman for Nationwide Building Society, said: “This sale represents further progress with our deleveraging strategy and we were extremely pleased with the speed by which the sale was achieved in a highly competitive market for large scale portfolio sales.”

Richard Croft, chief executive of M7 Real Estate, said: ”For M7 the sale represents the successful working out of our strategy for this portfolio in partnership with VBRi and Nationwide. We were delighted to work with KPMG in delivering a great result for the vendors.”