Battersea Power Station owner agrees loan break
REAL Estate Opportunities (REO), the owner of London’s iconic Battersea Power Station, has announced it has won a reprieve from its creditors while it finds an outside investor.
Note holder Oriental Property, which used to own the site, and other creditors have agreed to give the site a payment holiday on bonds worth in the region of £371m.
The move will drive forward Dublin-based REO’s plan to demerge its asset into a separate listed company. REO is desperate to offload the site after being hammered by the torrid property market in its home country.
Several buyers are understood to be monitoring the development, which will cost an estimated £4.5bn to develop, with sovereign wealth funds among the likely buyers.
REO had already agreed new lending terms with Lloyds and NAMA – Ireland’s “bad bank scheme”– during the summer, which gave it breathing room to find a buyer for the site.
It said it would launch a roadshow to attract a long-term equity partner to the project ahead of the expected receipt of planning permission for redevelopment, and that it hoped to list the project before the end of the year.