CBRE is in talks to buy leading UK retail asset manager Sovereign Centros as the brokerage world increasingly looks to bolster its expertise in this area.
Sovereign Centros is a real estate asset and development management business led by well-known developer and retail investor Chris Geaves. It has 27 staff and its history dates back to 1987. In 2012 it was formed when Geaves's retail developer Sovereign Land bought a majority stake in Centros from Delancey to bolster its development and asset management capabilities.
It works with a wide spread of global capital, banking and financial institutions, leading pension funds and public bodies on asset managing major town centre and retail projects with partners including Blackstone, Cerberus, Wells Fargo, M&G, Morgan Stanley, Helaba Bank, AXA, Delancey and Orion Capital Partners, Tesco and Frasers.
It has been involved at the some of the UK's largest schemes such as the Metrocentre in Gateshead where it was enlisted after the collapse of owner intu, and Merryhill in Dudley.
It has 12.5 million square feet of assets under management at present with a further 4 million square feet in the pipeline.
The talks were first reported by React News.
There has been expectation that the major brokerages would seek to improve their retail asset management capabilities, potentially via acquisition. Companies including Sovereign Centros, Ellandi and Pradera have taken on major roles asset-managing shopping centres and town centre developments during the retail downturn, particularly during COVID and the collapse of Intu.
CBRE and Sovereign Centros declined to comment.