US firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe’s City team and Slaughter and May advised as ITV bought the freehold for the London Television Centre from the Coal Pension Properties.
ITV paid Coal Pension Properties £56m for the 2.5 acre site, which houses ITV’s head offices and studios.
Previously, ITV was locked into a 56-year lease on the 22-storey tower, with no breaks. Under the new deal, Coal Pension Properties may get as much as £6.5m if the site is redeveloped in the next 10 years.
Slaughters advised ITV, with real estate partner Dermot Rice leading on the deal, along with corporate partner Paul Dickson and tax partner Gareth Miles.
Rice said that the parties went from heads of terms to completion in around 36 hours.
Orrick London real estate partner Fiona Stone advised Coal Pension Properties.
Background to this deal:
Slaughters has a deep and developed partnership with ITV. The firm’s relationship partner is now Dickson, but the history predates him. The firm began by acting for legacy Carlton Communications, which was taken over by Granada in 2004, when the company became ITV. The firm started out doing only corporate work but has since expanded into ITV’s real estate deals too. Over the past year, Slaughter and May has advised ITV on three other property deals - mostly disposals - but this latest deal is the largest it has done to date.
Slaughters works closely with director of central legal Paul Lewis’s team at ITV and usually has at least one lawyer seconded there at any one time.
Orrick’s Fiona Stone began acting for Coal Pension Properties back in 1989, when it was still called the Coal Board. She got to know the client after a colleague of hers acted for an industrial warehouse developer, whom the Coal Board funded. Orrick does most of Coal Pension Properties real estate work, but Hogan Lovells also gets instructed on other mandates.
