Shopping centre giant Capital & Regional pushes back takeover deadline

Shopping centre giant Capital & Regional has delayed the bidding deadline for a potential takeover offer by Newriver REIT.

On 23 May, the company, which owns shopping centres such as the Mall Wood Green and the Exchange in Ilford, revealed it had received a preliminary expression of interest from Newriver.

The deal saw the group’s majority shareholder, Growthpoint, being asked for a takeover of the entire share capital of Capital & Regional.

Under the UK takeover code, Newriver was assigned a deadline of 20 June to make a firm offer for the real estate investment trust.

However, Capital & Regional said today that to “facilitate ongoing discussions” with Newriver, it had requested the deadline be pushed back, to 18 July.

The company has also chatted to Vukile Property Fund on a potential proposal, though said last month that the offer process was still at an early stage.

After the announcements last month of a potential takeover, the trust’s share price jumped 18 per cent, and remains at its highest in over two years.

In March, the company reported that the number of people shopping across its properties rose 1.5 per cent last year to 44.5m visits, reaching close to 87 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Lawrence Hutchings, outgoing chief executive of the REIT, said he had noticed consumers are “increasingly focused on value for money as well as prioritising spend on non-discretionary items”.

“Our value-based retailers are responding by expanding their store footprints into the types of well-managed, high footfall centres offering affordable space in urban locations, that make up our portfolio,”

“This trend is evidenced by the speed at which our team was able to rapidly re-lease all three of our Wilko units to B&M,” he added.