M&G Real Estate, one of the world’s leading financial solutions providers for real estate investors, has acquired circa £30 million of new acquisitions on behalf of the M&G UK Enhanced Value Fund, bringing the total invested to more than £110 million.
Launched in February this year and managed by Paul Crosbie, the Fund takes advantage of the current heightened levels of risk aversion created by the Brexit process, targeting well located, mispriced assets with strong underlying fundamentals and asset management opportunities.
The latest round of acquisitions includes a multi let, modern office building in Uxbridge town centre and Phase 3 Merry Hill Retail Park in Dudley – a regionally dominant retail park in the West Midlands. Both assets provide immediate active management opportunities to enhance income profiles through new tenants and capital repositioning and support the Fund’s strategic investment themes of urbanisation, regeneration, connectivity and e-commerce.
Paul Crosbie comments: “With capital from UK institutions and as far afield as Asia, we are creating value in one of the most liquid and transparent investment markets globally for investors who want diversification and predictable income streams. Within a few months, we have created a diverse portfolio of office, retail and logistics assets, securing half of these transactions off market and without competitive bidding.
“These purchases demonstrate the dislocation in pricing that we’re seeing in perceived non-core assets – simply due to vacancy or tenancies reaching expiry – yet they sit within established markets with fundamental supply and demand and imbalances.”
The M&G UK Enhanced Value Fund invests in core, supply constrained locations such as London, the South East and the big six office markets and is aimed at institutional investors in the UK, Europe, Asia Pacific and Canada.