Mapfre has acquired an office building, Yalding House, in the London neighborhood of Fitzrovia from British Land, through its real estate fund with GLL.
The six-storey office building comprises almost 2,700 square meters and is home to the US technology startup Slack, entertainment law firm Russells Solicitors and international consultancy O&P Management, in addition to the Caravan restaurant on the ground floor. Yalding House was the headquarters of BBC radio for more than 60 years.
The transaction, in which Savills acted as advisor, was carried out through the SIEREF-GLL fund, which Mapfre launched with its managing partner GLL Real Estate Partners (Macquarie Group). This is the second transaction that has been closed via this vehicle in just two weeks, following on the back of the purchase of the Clifford Chance headquarters building in Luxembourg.
“We are detecting attractive returns in offices in the prime areas of the main European cities, despite the COVID-19 crisis, which makes it easier for us to diversify our portfolio toward these alternative assets in a context of historically low interest rates,” explains José Luis Jiménez, Mapfre’s group chief investment officer.
The fund, created in the first quarter of 2018, plans to invest up to 300 million euros in prime properties in mainly European markets over a period of two to three years. In addition to London and Luxembourg, Mapfre and GLL already own other real estate assets in Paris, Hamburg and Milan, with the fund already having committed close to 200 million euros, two-thirds of the total envisaged. Mapfre contributes 50 percent of the capital and the rest is distributed among a group of six institutional investors, mainly from the insurance and financial sectors and GLL itself.
