Aviva Investors has provided a £227m (€268.2m) loan to London-based property investment firm Romulus.
The debt finance, provided on behalf of Aviva UK Life’s annuity business, is secured against a number of Romulus’s office, hotel, leisure and retail assets in central London.
Aviva Investors said the ten-year, fixed-rate loan is secured against a number of assets owned by Romulus in the office, hotel, leisure
Following the Romulus deal, the Aviva Investors real estate debt team has surpassed its commitment to originate a billion pounds in sustainable transition real estate debt by 2025, the manager said.
In December 2020, the global asset management business of insurer Aviva set aside £1bn to finance sustainable real estate investments.
Gregor Bamert, the head of real estate debt at Aviva Investors, said: “We are delighted to build on our long-standing relationship with Romulus, a business which has shown great willingness to incorporate sustainability metrics across the full facility, against assets which are well-located and of high quality.
“Equally, it is great to have a long-standing borrower client help us reach our £1bn origination target. When we created the sustainable transition loans framework, this figure seemed both challenging and substantial, however, the reaction and engagement from borrowers has been astounding and we look forward to setting ourselves some even more challenging targets in the next phase of the programme.”
Ben Richardson, finance director at Romulus, said: “We are very pleased to extend our relationship with Aviva Investors and to have agreed a new, long-term facility, particularly one that recognises Romulus’s creative ability to continually add significant value to our investment portfolio and allows us to align our borrowing activities with the sustainability targets we have set for the business.
”We feel the facility also confirms the quality of Romulus’s assets, as well as our consistent and reliably strong performance as an active developer and asset manager.”
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