Goldman to buy £1.7bn Alecta portfolio

Goldman Sachs has been picked as the preferred bidder to buy $2.25bn (£1.7bn) of assets being sold by Alecta.

The portfolio is made up of around $1.8bn (£1.4bn) of assets in the US and $450m (£347.9m) of assets in the UK.

Goldman fought off competition from Blackstone, Northwood Investors and Starwood Capital, which were interested in the entirety of the portfolio, and a joint venture between Patron Capital and Clearbell, which were bidding for the UK portion only.

Alecta, a Stockholm-based fund with SEK732.5bn (£67.2bn) of assets under management, is exiting all of its directly owned real estate assets as it did not have sufficient scale and sought to take advantage of strong demand for property assets.

In the United Kingdom the portfolio includes 26 industrial, office, big box and high street retail assets located in and around London. In the United States, the portfolio is made up of 22 office, grocery-anchored and high street retail, multi-family and industrial properties located primarily in California, the south-west and north-east.

In April Alecta appointed JLL to sell the portfolio. The process was run out of New York with executive managing director Peter Nicoletti handling the sale.

At the time the portfolio was put up for sale Nicoletti said: “A portfolio of this scale, which features exceptional tenancy and world-class diversity, offers investors an opportunity to deploy a significant amount of capital in safe haven markets across two of the world’s most stable economies.”

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

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