Capital & Regional has carried out a successful capital raise worth £25m that will aid its funding of a £40m shopping centre acquisition.

The UK focused real estate investment trust (REIT), which specialises in shopping centre assets, confirmed it had acquired the Gyle Shopping Centre in Edinburgh earlier this month.

On 10 August, Capital & Regional announced details of the proposed acquisition, to be part-funded by a fully underwritten open offer to raise gross proceeds of approximately £25m. The group published a prospectus setting out the open offer, detailing that the equity raise would be available to all existing shareholders and fully underwritten by its majority shareholder, Growthpoint.

Chief executive, Lawrence Hutchings, said the centre would be “accretive to income from day one”, and also revealed that it had arranged terms with Morgan Stanley to staple debt to the acquisition at a 40% LTV capped at a cost of 6.5% fixed for five years.

“We have also identified a number of asset management opportunities to create value including refining the tenant mix, a renewed focus on leasing to improve occupancy and income, whilst enhancing the centre’s appeal to the growing and affluent catchment in southwestern Edinburgh,” Hutchings added.

Capital & Regional has today confirmed that it has received valid acceptances from qualifying shareholders under their open offer entitlements in respect of 34.6 million shares, representing approximately 75% of the open offer shares available.

Growthpoint has subscribed for the remaining 11.6 million open offer shares which when taken in aggregate with their qualifying shareholder acceptance, take the total participation in the open offer to 40.4 million open offer shares, representing approximately 87.4% of the shares available. This leaves Growthpoint’s resultant holding in the company at 67.6%.

In total, 46.2 million new ordinary shares will be issued at the issue price, meaning the company has raised gross proceeds of approximately £25m towards the Edinburgh project through its capital raising.

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