£1 billion Blackfriars Tower, London South Bank, UK – Beetham and Mirax / Joint Venture Finance

Structuring of a joint venture finance between UK property developer the Beetham Organization and giant Russian developer Mirax through which Mirax has taken a 50% stake in Beetham’s Blackfriars Tower. The £1 billion scheme consists of a luxury hotel on the lower part and of upmarket residential apartments on the upper part.

"The Beetham Blackfriars scheme is a unique commercial and residential development project which we knew could potentially attract a great deal of interest from investors" said Mark Jeffers, a Partner at Red Chilli Structured Finance. "For us, the key to this deal was to engineer a truly synergistic venture in which we created value on a number of levels. The ability to sell a 50% stake at such an early stage of the project was clearly an achievement. However, the joining of forces of one of the UK’s most promising developers with a conglomerate of Mirax’s calibre and international presence was very desirable. The apartments in the scheme will be aimed at the international market, and having our Russian friends as partners increases the reach into this increasingly important economy".

Red Chilli additionally arranged finance of £80m with Royal Bank of Scotland as part of the agreement. Commenting on the structure of the overall deal, Mark Jeffers added "in the current market place, it is essential to fully understand clients’ needs and to structure creative funding options that meet those needs. By working very closely with the Beetham Organization, we can clearly focus on creating value at every stage of the process. The structuring of the Blackfriars joint venture is evidence of the effectiveness of our approach".

Stephen Beetham, head of the Beetham Organization and Young Property Personality of the Year commented: "This is a very exciting development for the Beetham Organization. The JV structure Red Chilli created was of particular appeal as it enabled us to underpin the long term value of the project, while allowing us to extract some value at the outset for deployment in what is now a very interesting market".

If you would like more information on this or any other deals please feel free to contact us.

[ Back to previous page ]