Hammerson to dispose of All Office Investments

By Joanna Bourke | Office | 24-02-2012 | 08:31 | Estates Gazette
Hammerson has announced it will sell all of its office investments in order to focus on being a specialist retail REIT in the UK and France.

99 Bishopsgate

The REIT today said in its results for the year ended 31 December: "Our standing office investments will be sold over the medium term in order to maximise value, with capital redeployed to retail assets, increasing our focus and scale."

David Atkins, chief executive of Hammerson, said: "We will focus on being the best owner-manager and developer of retail property within Europe. We now intend to sell our standing office investments over the medium term to maximise returns, redeploying capital into the retail sector to exploit our expertise and build on our existing scale. This will create efficiencies that lead to further cost savings and income growth from our portfolio."

The £600m London offices portfolio includes 99 Bishopsgate, EC2, which it acquired for £100m in July 2011, and 125 Old Broad Street.

The strategy is intended to attract further JV capital for specialist retail projects.

Hammerson's results also revealed that net asset value per share rose 7.1% to 530p in 2011, and net rental income climbed to £296m from £284.7m the previous year.

joanna.bourke@estatesgazette.com