Barwood Capital, a leading UK real estate asset manager and investment company, has successfully closed its Barwood Property Fund 2015 (the “Fund”), its latest five year fund, with the ability to secure more than £100m of commercial and residential property assets in the UK regional markets.
The Fund will target commercial and residential real estate assets with lot sizes of between £3 million-£25 million in UK regional markets and across all asset classes. Barwood Capital, acting in its capacity as investment and asset manager to the Fund, will aim to deliver strong investor returns by adding significant value to the portfolio through asset management, planning gain and development, leveraging its team’s extensive real estate expertise and taking advantage of the current positive arbitrage between primary and secondary assets. Barwood Capital has an experienced in house team and, in order to spread its reach throughout the UK, will also fund other credible developers to deliver value from the assets it secures.
Joanna Greenslade, managing director of Barwood Capital, has overall responsibility for the fund, while Richard Bowen, a founding director of Barwood Capital, will sit on the Fund Investment Committee. Giles King has been appointed as Fund chairman and is a founder director of Westmount Real Estate. Prior to Westmount, Giles was at CBRE Global Investors for 17 years where he was EMEA head of investor services and a member of the European Executive Committee and European Management Board. Barwood Capital directors Ed Henson and recently appointed Andrew Barlow, will be responsible for sourcing and managing new opportunities for the Fund.
The Fund has been raised from predominately high net worth individuals, and institutional investors, including British Airways Pension Trustees Limited, the majority of which have invested in previous Barwood Capital funds. Executives from Barwood have personally co-invested nearly £3m providing strong alignment with clients.
Barwood’s approach is to provide investors with a real sense of asset ownership, yet enable them to spread their risk across a portfolio that is actively managed on their behalf, as well as a personal relationship and attention from senior accessible professionals that truly understand the market.
Joanna Greenslade, managing director of Barwood Capital, said: “We are delighted that the Fund has closed and been so well subscribed from a broad range of investors. The successful fund raising has been a result of our track record in delivering outstanding investor returns and due to our highly experienced team of professionals, who have particular in depth knowledge of the regional commercial and residential property markets. We have already identified a pipeline of potential assets and are able to act quickly to complete on deals. We look forward to being able to announce the Fund’s first acquisitions.”
Barwood Capital has a strong track record and is currently in the process of winding up an income fund raised in 2009 which has delivered a 12% per annum IRR to investors and managing a growth fund raised in 2012 which is on track to deliver a 20% per annum IRR to investors. The 2009 income fund was restricted to properties with existing leases in place and invested in seven sites, all of which contributed to delivering both income and capital gains to investors over a 5 ½ year period. The 2012 growth fund is now fully invested in nine sites, which range from planning gain opportunities to income producing sites with refurbishment and asset management potential.