M7 Oaktree Joint Venture Buys Three Regional UK Office Parks for £16.8 Million

London, 27th April, 2015 – M7 Real Estate’s investment joint venture with funds advised by Oaktree Capital Management has acquired three multi-let office parks in South West and North East England for a total of £16.8 million.

Archimedes Real Estate Investment Sarl acquired the properties from Bridges Ventures, Gladman Developments and Mandale Group. The office parks are located in Durham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury. They comprise a total of 149,000 sq ft of space, 6% of which is currently vacant. M7 Real Estate advised on the purchase and will manage the assets.

Will Hunting, of M7, said: “These acquisitions are excellent additions to the portfolio providing quality income and scale. As with all of our target assets, they offer asset management and enhancement opportunities from day one. This fits with our strategy for the portfolio, which is already delivering good results in terms of improving income and capital returns.”

Archimedes is the second investment joint venture formed by Oaktree and M7 following the acquisition of the EHI portfolio in Denmark in 2013. Archimedes focuses on smaller, higher-yielding regional UK business parks let mainly to small and medium-sized enterprises. The three purchases announced today take the portfolio to 17 assets with a total of 531,000 sq ft of space.

DTZ and Franck Steier Price acted for Archimedes on the acquisitions.