GE set to clinch £430m London deal

AMERICAN industrial conglomerate GE is poised to tighten its grip on the London property market with a deal worth at least £430m.

Talks are at an 'advanced stage' between GE Real Estate and a private-equity backed consortium which controls Haslemere, a Dutch-listed property company that owns offices from Portman Square to Richmond and a batch of shopping centres from Sutton to Edinburgh.

A successful takeover would increase to almost £780m the amount GE has invested in UK property in the past couple of months. It recently bought central London offices developer Benchmark for £323m, including debt.

Haslemere's wholly owned offices and shopping centres gave it a net asset value of £233m at end-December and GE is likely to have to pay close to that to buy the company's shares based on the latest property takeovers. It has £179m of debt.

GE also wants to buy the 20% it does not own in a £230m joint venture it already has with Haslemere, worth at least £46m without any premium. The venture includes five shopping centres.

Selling Haslemere will net a multi-million pound profit for a consortium of investors, who bought 98% of its shares, led by Brack Capital Real Estate in Israel and US-based Apollo International Real Estate and Merrill Lynch Capital.

The consortium paid £900m for Haslemere two years ago and has been breaking it up through profitable asset sales ever since.