New shopping centre fund

The new fund, LFF’s second retail fund, will target lot sizes of £35m-£100m.

LFF currently co-manages the Pan European Retail Fund, a joint venture with Aberdeen Asset Management on the continent, with total equity commitments of €160m (£126m) from five institutional investors. The fund invests in urban high street retail and has assets across its three target markets of Germany, France and Sweden.

Realm manages more than 2.5m sq ft of retail and leisure assets in the UK mainly for institutional investors.

David Rendall, chief executive of LFF, told Property Week the new fund was aiming to raise around 50% of the cash through new investors, with the first close around the end of this year. The rest of the fund would be raised by leveraging the group’s existing distribution network.

“We believe the fund will appeal to major blue chip institutional investors, and may appeal to the multi-manager,” said Rendall.

“There’s a lot of shopping centres coming to the market right now, and I don’t think it’s going to let up quickly,” he added.

Rendall also said that should, as many in the market expect, Land Securities put The Galleria in Hatfield on the market, such a deal would be something the new fund would consider.

He said: “That would be the sort of centre we’d look at. The kind of place where the current owners had managed it to a certain point, and there was room for new management to take it to the next stage.”