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Update on UL Business Park Sale

Ahouvi returns to UK with £55m offices buy
22.05.09
By Laura Chesters

Israeli investor snaps up five Hants properties as he favours UK over Europe

Israeli property investor Igal Ahouvi has marked a return to the UK investment market with a £55m business park purchase.

Ahouvi has exchanged contracts to buy five office buildings on Solent Business Park in Hampshire for £55.5m from Goodman.

The properties total 258,336 sq ft and are let to National Air Traffic Services on a 14-year lease running to 2023 at around £18/sq ft.

The price paid is thought to reflect a yield of 7.75%.

Ahouvi has exchanged on the purchase, which has been split 50:50 through two entities: half through his private company, Blenheim Properties Group, and half through Ravad, an Israeli listed property company in which Ahouvi owns a controlling 70% stake.

Blenheim and Ravad will finance the transaction from shareholders’ equity and a bank loan.

Ahouvi is back buying in the UK because he believes there are good opportunities compared with Europe. He is thought to have ‘hundreds of millions’ to invest in the UK.

Ahouvi has bought intermittently in the UK over the past year. In January 2008, he made his first UK investment for three years – a B&Q warehouse in Doncaster bought for £25m at a 6.25% yield.

Last summer, he bought Colne Valley Retail Park from Hercules for around £45.1m – a 6.59% yield.

Ahouvi last year also bid on several well-known assets, among them British Land’s Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield, but London & Stamford eventually bought the asset.

Ahouvi is also selling several of his European assets.

The investment deal at Solent Business Park is rare for the M27 corridor.

The business park, which is one of the most well known in the south, attracted Specsavers to take 38,500 sq ft at the Forum 6 building earlier this year.

The UK optician chain is expanding from its 20,000 sq ft Mitchell House building in Eastleigh.

Strutt & Parker advised Goodman; Andrew Barrs & Co advises Ahouvi.