Lloyds’ private equity arm acquires landmark event venue
Birmingham City Council brought in the New Year with one of its largest ever sales with Eversheds, Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co (WLG) and Gateley all winning mandates on the sale of the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) to Lloyds Banking Group’s private equity arm LDC.
WLG acted for the council on the £307m deal, which is for all NEC Group businesses except the leases of the Hilton Metropole and Crowne Plaza hotels. That included a 125-year lease for the NEC site itself plus a 25-year leasehold interest in the International Convention Centre and Barclaycard Arena. The transaction involved a substantial amount of property work as well as corporate aspects and saw Eversheds act for LDC, with Gateley for the management.
Corporate partner David Vaughan led WLG’s team and advised on all aspects of the process, including structuring, pensions and leases. WLG’s commercial development and investment chairman Robert Caddick led on real estate aspects of the transaction. Vaughan said: ‘Nothing much of this size has been disposed of by local authorities before. There is the odd airport asset but there aren’t many and, in particular, Birmingham City Council hadn’t done anything like this before. We had to guide the council through the entire sale process. You couldn’t have met a more skilled and committed group of people trying to balance serving their political masters, in the best way they could with really doing the best possible job for the people of Birmingham.’
‘Nothing much of this size has been disposed of by local authorities before.’
David Vaughan, WLG
Eversheds partner Sue Lewis led the team acting for LDC alongside partner Patrick Davis, while Gateley’s private equity head Paul Hayward acted for management. Lewis said: ‘We had a large team from Eversheds and, although it’s a corporate transaction, it is substantially property led as you can tell from the assets included within it. We started work on it late spring/early summer last year. It’s been a long process.’
kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk