Unibail-Rodamco to sell €2.5bn retail portfolio

Unibail-Rodamco is selling a €2.5bn portfolio of shopping centres across Europe.

The Franco-Dutch retail investor has mandated BNP Paribas to offload a total of 42 assets it now regards as non-core, say sources.

The pan-European portfolio, branded as ‘QUID’ and sold by the French bank's corporate entity, totals 660,000 m2. The portfolio accounts for roughly 10% of Unibail-Rodamco’s entire portfolio.

The preference is for a sale based on a policy of ‘as is, where is’, with little initial information available on properties’ characterstics. It is likely that the assets will come with limited potential for rental growth.

Unibail-Rodamco’s strategy of focusing its efforts on larger shopping centres is well known.

Prior to the decision to sell the QUID portfolio, Unibail-Rodamco had announced it was expecting to sell around €500m of real estate by the end of this year and use improving market conditions to sell more assets on an ‘opportunistic basis’.

A total of €1.2bn of property was sold in the first six months of this year, with investors set to receive €1.8bn in share payments next month (OCT), at €20 a share.

In February, the group, Europe's biggest listed company, sold five Dutch malls to listed company Wereldhave for €235m.

Cushman & Wakefield were mandated to sell the properties part of a €1bn portfolio of Dutch assets on the market. Three other Dutch properties, mainly malls and worth a total of €292m, were sold to Altera Vastgoed in July.

In France, Unibail-Rodamco sold its Saint-Martial mall in Limoges for around €90m to German fund manager Union Investment. The sale reflected a net yield of around 6%.

EGi News | EuroProperty News