Hansteen pockets €750m as sale of German, Dutch assets completes
Hansteen Holdings
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16:34 05/02/20
Hansteen was cashed up to the tune of an extra €750m on Monday, confirming that the proposed sale of its German and Dutch portfolios to entities owned by funds advised by affiliates of The Blackstone Group and M7 Real Estate had now completed.
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The FTSE 250 firm had announced the sale, worth a gross €1.28bn, on 20 March.
“As previously announced, Hansteen intends to distribute, to its shareholders, a substantial portion of the net cash proceeds details of which will be announced as soon as reasonably practicable,” its board said on Monday.
The portfolios were sold on a debt-free basis for cash, with the €1.28bn price representing a premium of around €76m - or 6% - to the year-end valuation of the assets, which itself included a valuation uplift of €34m over the 31 December 2015 valuation.
Hansteen said at the time of the sale’s announcement that the disposal realised the value in the portfolios at a time when they were not only at historically high levels of occupancy and rent for the period of the company’s ownership, but also at a time when the euro/sterling exchange rate was favourable.
“The sale is in line with our long-term business and portfolio strategy of buying at a low point in the cycle, with low occupancy and rents, adding value through improved asset management and subsequently realising the investment at a higher point in the cycle,” Hansteen’s joint chief executives Morgan Jones and Ian Watson said in a statement at the time of the initial announcement.