Starwood European Real Estate Finance, alongside other Starwood funds, made a £220m loan to Almacantar, a property investment and development company specialising in London. They now plan to increase the size of this loan to £265m with this fund providing £5m of this. Almacantar plan to use this to fund the refurbishment of Centre Point, the 34 storey tower next to Tottenham Court Road tube station.
Starwood European Real Estate Finance has also secured a £50m revolving credit facility at rates of LIBOR +2.5% for an initial draw down and rising rates if they borrow money for a longer time. The idea is that they can use this to expand the portfolio and then repay this short-term borrowing using the proceeds of share issues as well as the money generated by the portfolio. On the latter point, they have been syndicating some of the loans they have made (selling them onto other lenders). They have completed the syndication of a €35.9m loan secured against an industrial portfolio in the Netherlands.
SWEF : Starwood financing Centre Point refurbishment