Retail/Shopping Centres Case Studies

The Maltings Shopping Centre, St Albans, UK — 38,183 sq m

The Maltings was purchased for £51,999,000 and London road for £3,270,000. Subsequently a number of unit recovery, refurbishment and reconfiguration projects, have been carried out in order to improve both the tenant line-up and income. This included the introduction of key tenants, such as TK Maxx and Topshop.

During the period of ownership, the centre has been repositioned in the city’s retail hierarchy and is now the prime, target location for national retailers. The centre is currently valued at £115m.

Visit the Maltings Shopping Centre Website

Multicenter, Vasteras, Sweden - 102,782 sq m

In 2005, the directors purchased 5 shopping centres in Sweden’s 6th largest city, Vasteras. These included: Punkt, Gallerian, Centra, Sigma and Skrapan. The total price was €185m.

Sigma and Skrapan were quickly sold to a Swedish property fund and subsequently asset management initiatives were carried out in Punkt and Gallerian. Those included: the creation of multi-level trading at both the first and lower ground floor levels and unit recovery, reconfiguration and re-letting. The in-house leasing team were responsible for creating the first bespoke Swedish unit for New Yorker, a major European retailer, and subsequently facilitating their successful national expansion.

Punkt and Gallerian were were sold in 2011 for €94m

Kamppi Shopping Centre, Helsinki, Finland — 35,000 sq m

Kamppi, Helsinki’s premier city centre retail scheme, was purchased in April 2006 for €350m from Finnish development company Pontos. Situated at the heart of Helsinki’s bus and underground rail network, annual footfall reached 35 million at concourse level.

The development leasing phase was completed and subsequently a number of unit recovery, reconfiguration and re-letting projects were carried out in order to improve both the tenant line-up and the rental tone. In addition, the creation of mall trading and other non-core initiatives accounted for established new income of €750,000 pa at sale. Total net operating income improvement accounted for 42% of the increase in value.

The centre was sold in March 2008 for €452.5m.