Linklaters

Recent developments have only served to reinforce the need to understand how these might best be deployed in a hugely challenging market.

In the investment markets, you need advisers who understand the different tools and techniques required to balance risk and reward and to maximise tradability.  Linklaters' real estate and leisure sector specialists do understand them - in some cases we invented them - so we can help our clients to create value, share risk, enhance returns and mitigate tax costs using an ever-widening range of innovative and complex structures.  We are also unique in being able to draw on market leading, cross border teams in all of the various disciplines required: banking, mergers and acquisitions, real estate corporate finance, tax, funds, securitisation, derivatives, litigation and asset finance, as well as environment, construction, planning/zoning and other real estate-specific expertise.

Businesses of all kinds need operational space which is held on the right terms and at the right cost, is well-located and well-run, appropriately equipped and environmentally sustainable.  Linklaters is at the forefront of the market in terms of the traditional real estate specialisms required here.

Our capabilities in the leisure sector include hotel acquisitions and disposals, acquisition financing, bilateral and syndicated credit facilities, hotel management agreements including sale and leaseback or sale and ‘manage-back’, construction and development, the establishment of REITs, real estate finance and property litigation.

Contact us

To discuss legal issues with Linklaters’ global real estate team, please contact sector leaders Michaela Sopp, Wolfram H. Krüger or William Buckley (real estate) or Pieter Puelinkcx (leisure).

You can find out more about Linklaters’ real estate and leisure capabilities from sector manager Michelle Keaney on (44 20) 7456 2268.

Recent real estate and leisure sector transactions include advising:

• Union Investment on its purchase of the Horizon Plaza building in Warsaw – one of the largest Polish real estate deals of 2010
• Capital Shopping Centres on its £1bn+ acquisition of Manchester’s Trafford Centre – the largest ever UK real estate transaction
• on the €550m sale of a share in the Opernturm in Frankfurt
• on the €180m refinancing of Tour Areva in Paris-la Défense
• HSBC on the sale and leasebacks of its global HQ office tower at Canary Wharf in London and its Paris HQ on the Champs-Elysées
• BBVA on the sale of a five-star hotel redevelopment in London to a Spanish hotel operator
• the banks on the Germany’s first accelerated bookbuilding of a REIT
• on the sale and leaseback of 13 Swedish hotels to a French hotel operator
• a fund on the sale and leaseback of 12 hypermarkets and 3 retail galleries in Spain
• on the €1.75bn Public Private Partnership for the construction of 200+ schools in the Flemish Region by 2016 – the first PPP structure of its kind in Belgium and the biggest PPP infrastructure deal in Belgium to reach financial close
• Lend Lease on its redevelopment of Elephant & Castle - one of the most significant urban regeneration schemes in Europe
• on the creation of a €500m real estate investment fund to invest in various Eurozone centres
• on a €300m limited recourse financing secured on 39 distribution warehouses across Europe
• on the £4.5bn sale of UK residential mortgages, at the time the world’s largest RMBS since the financial crisis
• on the €325m acquisition financing of 9 shopping centres across Poland – the largest single real estate financing transaction in Poland since 2004
• on the €125m multi-jurisdictional restructuring of five joint venture shopping centre projects in Turkey, Bulgaria and Poland
• the banks on the financing of the largest wind-energy project in the German North Sea
• a large European real estate fund on Carbon Reduction Commitment analysis including consideration of the trust management rules of non-UK jurisdictions