Real Estate
The real estate sector is a core part of our business and our heritage as a firm. With such a long track record of expertise and success in this field, our lawyers deliver an exceptional service characterised by robust, commercial and technically expert advice.
We advise on all the key issues affecting the property industry, including regeneration and development schemes, investment, funding, construction matters, property disputes, portfolio management, planning, taxation and the creation of corporate structures.
In addition to our core property team we also have specialists in the areas of construction, planning, environmental, property finance, management and property litigation. We draw on the skills and experience of our corporate and tax groups to provide clients with advice on sale and acquisition structuring, both onshore and offshore, stamp duty, stamp duty land tax and VAT planning.
This strength in depth and breadth enables us to support sophisticated transactions including those involving complex structures and offshore elements or those with attendant regulatory requirements. We are also able to utilise our extensive international experience and contacts to complete cross-border transactions for a diverse range of companies.
Our real estate clients include multinationals, major institutions and listed companies, clearing banks, lenders, developers and entrepreneurs.
If you have any questions or queries please call Richard on +44 (0)20 3036 7203 or email rreuben@fladgate.com
Chambers UKA “fantastic team” acts for a range of clients, including property funds and REITs, developers, hotel and leisure operators and domestic and international investors.
Industries
Real Estate team
Well-reputed specialists in representing mid-size businesses and property developers and investors. Effective in transactions, including those complicated by tax or offshore concerns, and experts in the hotels and leisure sector. “They have a commercial view and are quick to act while still providing sound advice when the timeframe allowed is limited.” “I found them very good and well rounded.”
Chambers UK
Fladgate LLP has an investment, funds and development practice and an increasingly busy hotels and leisure team. The firm has been advising Cathedral Group on various regeneration projects including a £57m mixed-use scheme at Deptford Rise, and acted for Mount Anvil on the purchase and funding of a canal-side development in Wembley. Clients describe the service as “excellent”, “with partner contact throughout the instruction, prompt response times and a practical, problem-solving approach”.
Legal 500
Known for representing high net worth individuals and private family trusts. Also recognised for property matters in the hotels and leisure sector and for corporate real estate work. Strengths: Client service: “Clear, accurate, dynamic, reactive. In one word: excellent!” Commercial awareness: “We get value because they close deals: they are good closers.”
Chambers UK
Acted for a private family trust on the acquisition of a joint venture company owning Marks & Spencer’s Castle Donnington distribution centre. Acted for Cathedral Group on the £78 million mixed-use development and regeneration of Caxton Street North and Hoy Street in Canning Town.
Chambers UK
“Outstanding, and comparable to the very best mid-tier firms”, Fladgate LLP recently advised Cathedral Group on a £78m mixed-use development and regeneration scheme. With hotels and leisure a notable area of strength, the firm also advised Lowy Group on the £33.5m sale of the Umi Hotel. Gideon Dabby-Joory “always has the answers”, and Stephen Lewis, Allen Cohen, Richard Reuben and Philip Turner are also recommended.
Legal 500
Well-reputed specialists in representing mid-size businesses and property developers and investors. Effective in transactions, including those complicated by tax or offshore concerns, and experts in the hotels and leisure sector. Also advises on residential development projects. “They’re absolutely brilliant! They’re informative – they break things down and translate them into layman’s terms so we can understand what the impact of our decisions will be,” one client comments. Advised on CNM Estates’ purchase of Tolworth Tower and on its proposed redevelopment.
Chambers UK
Advised Migdal Insurance on the £40 million acquisition of two unit trusts which own an Edinburgh office building. Also advised on a £35 million share purchase transaction in a company which owns three shopping centres. Daniel Polden handles property and real estate finance transactions on behalf of both international and UK-based clients. He is active in commercial real estate development, as well as advising investment transactions.
Chambers UK
Fladgate LLP’s ‘strong team with strength from partners to associates’ is ‘very experienced in the leisure sector’, where key players include the ‘very commercial and deal orientated’ Stephen Lewis, and Mark Saunders, who is ‘market leading on title and lease issues and excellent at large transactions, especially cinemas’. Saunders recently advised Odeon on the opening of a cinema in the new BH2 leisure complex in Bournemouth. The practice is also noted as being ‘a very good source for guidance in difficult transactional situations’, and in one highlight Nick Mumby acted for Aldgate Tower Investments on its £346m sale to a joint venture between China Life and Brookfield Property Partners.
Legal 500
Other names to note include the highly recommended Gideon Dabby-Joory, who represented an offshore private family trust on the £35m disposal of a brownfield site for development in St Pancras, and senior associate Amanda Hado-Bodfield, who ‘gets the deal done’. In the retail sector, high-end tenant clients include Roche Bobois and Jurlique UK. The ‘very insightful’ Richard Reuben leads the team.
Legal 500
- Patron Capital IV LP – £75m headline acquisition, by a joint venture between Patron Capital and APAM Ltd, of the Arlington Business Park in Theale, Reading from the Arlington Business Parks Partnership. The Arlington Business Park is considered to be one of the Thames Valley’s most established business parks and includes ten office buildings let to a diverse occupier base, including Wrigley, Wolseley, Hewlett Packard and Vodafone, amongst others.
- Hodson Developments – acquisition and financing of a substantial part of a development site at Chilmington Green, Ashford. Chilmington Green will bring a vibrant mixed–use new community to the town of Ashford in Kent and will provide 5,750 new homes in three distinctive neighbourhoods as well as retail, community, social and recreational facilities.
- Aldgate Tower Developments – £200m financing of Aldgate Tower, with funding provided by Starwood Capital, and subsequent letting of floors 11 & 12 to Tag Worldwide for a term of ten years. Tag Worldwide is part of the Williams Lea Group, owned by DeutschePost DHL.
- Offshore group – acquisition of Camden Lock Market (a site in excess of one acre, housing 250 market stalls, 50 shops, 20 workshops and five food outlets); the acquisition of 50% of shares in the offshore group owning Camden Stables Market and a large development site known as Camden Lock Village; and a £230m refinancing facility secured on Camden Stables Market with affiliates of Nomura International Plc.
- Cathedral Group – £78m mixed–use Canning Town development and regeneration scheme to be carried out on land owned by the London Borough of Newham, including entering into agreements with the freeholder, London Borough of Newham, Galliard Homes and the occupational leasehold owners of the site.
- Tritax Securities Limited – acquisition of a hotel portfolio from LR Economy Hotels Limited for a consideration of circa £70m via a collective investment scheme and the sale to Accor of a £71m portfolio of 13 UK hotels for its HotelInvest business.
- CNM Estates (Tolworth Tower) Limited – acquisition of Tolworth Tower for £53.5m.
- The Medical Defence Union – lease of 47,000 sq ft of office space on levels 32 and 33 at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 from Canary Wharf Group.
- Madison International Realty – real estate aspects of the acquisition of a 50% ownership stake in a London office portfolio from TIAA Henderson Real Estate. The stake in the Houndsditch Estate portfolio was purchased from TH Real Estate on behalf of its Central London Office Fund, creating a new joint venture partnership between the two firms. The £200m portfolio is comprised of five properties clustered in an area near Liverpool Street station.
- British Steel Pension Fund – infrastructure agreements following a successful appeal against a refusal of planning permission for a mixed–use development comprising 7,310 sq m industrial warehousing unit, 8,000 sq m retail store and a petrol filling station to be occupied by Asda.
- Weston Homes Plc – rearrangement of their group financing, involving a reorganisation of their existing £105m facility plus a new £3.5m bilateral facility to enable the company to complete an important strategic acquisition.
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