Norton Rose Fulbright has acted for the sellers and management of Rockspring Property Holdings Limited (Rockspring) on their conditional sale of the Group to Patrizia Immobilien AG (Patrizia). The sale is subject to regulatory and antitrust approvals.
Rockspring is a leading London-based manager of pan-European real estate funds and discretionary advisory mandates with €7.9 billion under management and available debt. 35 percent of its assets under management are in the UK and Ireland, 34 percent in Germany, 13 percent in France with the remaining 19 percent spread throughout the rest of Europe. Its clients include over 120 institutional investors across 20 countries. It invests in and manages properties on behalf of its funds and accounts in all sectors of the property market from its network of seven European offices.
The Norton Rose Fulbright team was led by partner Mark Lloyd Williams, supported by consultant Rosalind Fox and senior associate Si Xuan Cai, associate Joshua Singer, trainee solicitors Marley Ali and Alexandra Simpson (corporate); partner Dominic Stuttaford (tax); partner Imogen Garner (regulatory), of counsel Nick Howard (employment), of counsel Ed Hunnisett (pensions), partner Matt Findlay (benefits), and partner Mark Tricker and associate Jamie Cooke (antitrust).
Edmund Craston, Managing Director of Rockspring, commented: “Selling the business is a major one-off event for any company and by definition not something we are accustomed to doing or could hope to do successfully without the right help. It was therefore essential to be advised and supported by a multi-disciplinary team which had both the required technical know-how and plenty of relevant experience of similar situations.”
Mark Lloyd Williams commented: "We are really pleased to be able to assist our clients in achieving a great result in completing a very complicated transaction. Like many successful owner-operated businesses in the real estate asset management sector, market trends and the greater regulatory burden, heightened by the uncertainties of Brexit, are creating a strong impetus on them to combine with larger businesses to enable them to provide the full service for their clients. We believe that we will see many more M&A transactions in this sector over the forthcoming months."
Norton Rose Fulbright has a long history of acting on major acquisitions and sales of owner-managed businesses in the European fund management sector and this deal follows on from the firm’s advising on the acquisition of the management interest by BMO in BMO Real Estate Fund Management earlier this year.
In recognition of the firm’s work in advising on several of the most complex and prominent deals in the market, Norton Rose Fulbright was named “Real Estate Team of the Year” at the Legal 500 UK Awards 2018.
