Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance named Real Estate Team of the Year

International law firm Clifford Chance has won Real Estate Team of the Year at the 2019 Legal Business Awards for its pivotal role in advising Network Rail on the sale of its commercial estate portfolio of around 5,200 properties to a joint venture between Blackstone Property Partners and Telereal Trillium for £1.46 billion.

The multi-disciplinary Clifford Chance team advising Network Rail was led by real estate partners Angela Kearns and Franc Peña, co-head of the global real estate sector Adrian Levy and global head of real estate Jonathan Solomon.

Commenting on the award, Angela Kearns said: "Clifford Chance's real estate team consistently advises some of the most complex and high-profile matters, which has in turn earned us our tremendous reputation in the market. This prestigious industry award is the latest endorsement of our market leading capabilities in the real estate sector."

In addition to the Real Estate Team of the Year award, the deal, which the Financial Times cited as "one of the largest ever UK real estate deals", also brought Network Rail the honour of In-House Team of the Year.

Clifford Chance's leading real estate group advises on the entire property 'life-cycle' from the initial acquisition, development, leasing, joint venturing and financing through to the final exit, as well as tax structuring, REITs, funds, financing, planning, environment and litigation. Additional recent high-profile real estate mandates on which the London Real Estate team has advised include:

• CK Asset Holdings' £1 billion acquisition of 5 Broadgate from British Land and GIC. 5 Broadgate is UBS' UK headquarters.
• Blackstone on the acquisition of the National Exhibition Centre Group, the live event and exhibition operator which includes the National Exhibition Centre Birmingham, The International Arena and The Genting Arena – for an enterprise value of £860 million
• Samsung Life's sale of 30 Gresham Street for a price in excess of £400 million to the joint venture of two Hong Kong based developers, Wing Tai Properties and Manhattan Garments. 30 Gresham Street is the London headquarters of Commerzbank and European headquarters of Investec.
• Employees Provident Fund of Malaysia on the formation of a joint venture with Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), to forward purchase and fund the development of Phase 2 of the landmark Battersea Power Station redevelopment in London.
• Angelo Gordon and Hondo Enterprises on their acquisition of the freehold and leasehold ownership interests at Brixton Market
• AIG Global Real Estate on their acquisition and forward funding of a number of student accommodation developments in strategic locations across the UK, including: accommodation developer Gilltown Limited and a deal with Kier Property Developments Limited to convert the historic Coventry and Warwickshire into a student development.