Barclays Bank has launched UK Logistics 2026-2, a commercial mortgage-backed securitisation backed by a £648.8 million loan it is advancing to Blackstone's Mileway to refinance a portfolio of UK logistics assets.
The transaction, which CoStar News revealed last week was being prepared as the first CMBS since the start of war in Iran in March, is being rated by S&P and KBRA. CBRE Loan Services is the loan servicer.
The loan will be advanced to Mileway UK Finco III Ltd, a Blackstone-owned company, and is secured on a UK portfolio of 184 predominantly logistics and industrial assets. The portfolio comprises 9.5 million square feet of total lettable area spread across the country and is valued at £998.2 million as of December 2025. The loan-to-value ratio is 65%.
Assets include the 587,360-square-foot Autobase industrial estate in Tividale, near Dudley, in the West Midlands and an estate at the Windmill Industrial Estate in Denton near Manchester.
The loan has an initial term of two years with three one-year extension options. Payments due under the loan facility agreement will primarily fund the issuer's interest and principal payments due under the notes.
The CMBS will be a welcome return of activity in Europe for those looking for alternative real estate financing solutions. After a revival in 2025, new CMBS issuance in the UK started 2026 well with four coming to market by February. But since the Iran war began, only HSBC's launch of the refinancing of Westfield's Stratford City has taken place.
The presales process for a £750 million CMBS backed by Westfield Stratford City shopping centre in east London, one of Europe's largest malls, started in April. That refinanced a prior CMBS, and was not new issuance.
New European CMBS issuance soared in 2025 to €8.7 billion in 17 transactions across multiple sectors, against €2.2 billion in five transactions the previous year, to chalk up the highest annual volume for more than a decade, according to a report from Scope. That included €5.3 billion in the UK. Blackstone accounted for roughly 72% of European and 79% of UK issuance that year.
To underscore the increasingly competitive and active market before the Iran war, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank and Wells Fargo priced Sirius Logistics 2026-1 UK DAC in January at the most tightly priced sterling-denominated CMBS since the pandemic.
The transaction was for £500 million, expanded from £375 million at launch, secured against a portfolio of 124 last‑mile industrial and logistics assets across the UK, owned by Mileway,. That securitised an £804 million loan provided by Bank of America, Standard Chartered and Wells Fargo to finance 126 properties at a 60% loan to value, which had itself refinanced three loans originated by BoA in 2021. The deal was priced with a weighted average margin of 154 basis points and underwritten at 60% loan to value.
The market will be keenly following how the latest CMBS prices.
Mileway is the largest owner of last-mile logistics real estate assets in Europe. As of 31 March 2026, it owned and managed 1,585 assets across 10 countries, including 665 in the UK. Blackstone is a global private equity firm with approximately $1.3 trillion of assets under management, including approximately $618 billion of real estate assets across multiple commercial real estate sectors globally as of the final quarter of 2025.
CoStar News revealed that Blackstone had refinanced its Mileway logistics platform with €7.5 billion of debt from existing and new lenders in December 2023. When Mileway was recapitalised early in 2022, it was valued at around €21 billion.