Asda’s billionaire owners Mohsin and Zuber Issa are said to be in talks to sell another chunk of the supermarket’s property estate, in a deal estimated to be worth around £500m.
Australian finance house, Macquarie Asset Management, is close to purchasing ground rent leases linked with 50 Asda stores in Britain which will last for 50 years, React News reported.
Under a provision included in the deal, Asda would re-assume ownership for a small amount at the end of the term.
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As a result, the supermarket giant will be paying a relatively low rent at the same time as being able to raise a large amount of equity to ease its soaring debt pile.
In July, the Issa brothers sold off another 25 of the supermarket’s stores to US investor Realty Income Corporation in a deal worth £650m, which Asda will in turn lease back.
This follows a $1.5bn sale and leaseback deal across a proportion of the brothers’ EG Group US property portfolio in March to sell 415 stores on the US east coast to Realty Income.
Earlier this year, EG’s UK and Ireland operations were sold to Asda for £2.27bn, which will see the grocer obtaining 350 petrol filling station sites and over 1,000 food-to-go locations.
