Mishcon and Nabarro prove good fit for £220m Savile Row sale
Mishcon de Reya and Nabarro were drafted in to advise on the first purchase - a trophy property on Savile Row - by a joint venture between LaSalle Investment Management and Quantum Global Real Estate.
Ian Paul
Plaza Global Real Estate Partners, the joint venture formed by LaSalle and Quantum earlier in the year, is understood to have paid around £220m for 23 Savile Row in Mayfair from offshore entity D2 Private, which has had loans on some of its other properties acquired by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).
D2 Private bought the 103,000 sq ft property from Legal & General for around £110m in 2009 and then redeveloped the building. Tenants include York Capital Management, Resolution, General Atlantic, Sapinda UK and high-end art gallery Hauser & Wirth, which is on the ground floor. In April this year, D2 secured one of the area’s highest-ever rents when it let the top floor of the building to a German hedge fund manager for £110 per sq ft.
Mishcon advised D2 Private, led by real estate partners Philip Freedman QC and Ian Paul and corporate partner Ross Bryson.
Nabarro advised Plaza, with real estate partner Kevin Stimpson leading and corporate partners Caroline Newsholme and Andrew Wigfall and finance partner Michael Delaney assisting.
Background to this deal:
Nabarro won its role acting for Plaza through the firm’s historic relationship acting for various LaSalle Investment Management funds. Stimpson and fellow real estate partners Rob Raimes and Simon Staite handle the firm’s relationship with LaSalle. The firm does not have any connection with Quantum.
Mishcon has been advising D2 Private, which was established in 2004 and is run by David Arnold and Deirdre Foley, for a few years. It advised the company on its acquisition of 23 Savile Row in 2009, as well as on the subsequent development of the building. Paul is the relationship partner for the client. The firm began advising D2 on the sale of 23 Savile Row in January, when it negotiated a fixed fee for the deal, as is the case for most transactions of this sort within the real estate sector.
“This was a well run and well-managed deal,” Paul said. “The fact that it [the price] was a big number was not relevant but it was a corporate deal selling an offshore entity, which is always tricky. We spent a lot of time getting the data room right – we host our own data rooms and run them ourselves. I think we, and the clients, would have like the deal done quicker, but there’s always things that come up and you can’t anticipate everything.”
