News | Real Estate

Friday 4th August 2006

City and corporate law firm SJ Berwin LLP has advised The British Land Company PLC on the purchase and leaseback of seven large B&Q stores from Kingfisher plc for £198 million.

The stores, all freehold, are in prime edge of town locations in Ashford, Bury, Exeter, Glasgow, Grimsby, Lincoln, and North Shields.  They are approx. 100,000 sq ft each and in total extend to nearly 700,000 sq ft.  They are currently let at market levels to B&Q PLC on 20-year leases with an option to break after 15 years.

The SJ Berwin team was led by real estate partners Michael Scott and Helen Willett, and corporate partner Michael Goldberg.  Kingfisher was advised by Mark Wheelhouse (property) and Elaine Williams (corporate) of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

The purchase of these properties is part of British Land’s expansion of its out of town retail portfolio and adds to its portfolio of index linked leases in which it sees value.

The British Land Company plc is a long established client of SJ Berwin LLP.  Since the beginning of 2006, the firm has advised the company on the sale of just under £1 billion of assets and acquisitions of approximately £400 million.

• On 1 June 2005 SJ Berwin LLP, an English limited liability partnership, took over the business of the SJ Berwin general partnership.  SJ Berwin LLP or an affiliated undertaking has an office in Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Munich and Paris.
• SJ Berwin LLP was named 'UK Firm of the Year' at the 2005 Legal Week Awards.  The award recognised SJ Berwin’s five years of international expansion and its involvement in a series of high quality deals.
• SJ Berwin's Real Estate Division totals 118 staff of which 21 are partners in London and 50 associates, encompassing the disciplines of Commercial Real Estate, Construction, Planning & Environment, Property Litigation and Real Estate Funds.  In addition, there are 3 dedicated real estate tax partners and 1 dedicated real estate partner in Paris.  There is an increasing emphasis on cross firm activity with related areas of Banking and Corporate and with the international offices.  The division acts for blue chip clients including British Land, Royal Bank of Scotland, the Hilton Group, Brixton plc, AXA, The Crown Estate, Marks & Spencer and Gazeley.
• The Real Estate Team is Legal Business Real Estate Team of the Year 2005.  It was also named "Real Estate Team of the Year" in the Lawyer Magazine Awards 2004, following its advice on the RBS/Canary Wharf transaction the highest-value property investment transaction in the UK in 2004.
• Revenue from Real Estate represents approximately 21% of the firm's total revenue in London.