Melford Capital Partners - What we have done

Melford Capital Partners is operated by a management team that has over two decades experience of building and operating boutique, specialist property businesses and also in creating and managing institutional funds.

Experience

The team has collectively acquired, managed or sold over £550m of commercial real estate in 59 separate transactions - across a very broad spectrum of asset types and locations throughout the United Kingdom.

In addition, members of the team have managed well in excess of £2bn of commercial property assets throughout the country for third party institutional investors and have had direct experience of investing during times of significant market disruption, notably during the recession of the early 1990s.

Performance

The partners have deployed over £165m of equity generating an average return of over 40% IRR on realized transactions. A significant proportion of these transactions were un-levered, where absolute returns were achieved through superior acquisition timing, asset pricing and active asset management derived as a result of managements' specialist focus.

Patrick Bushnell was a founder of Henderson's real estate business. As Head of Property Investment, and later as Chairman of the Investment Committee, he oversaw the development of over 35 funds between 1992-2008 growing assets under management to over £12bn.

Ludo Mackenzie was Manager of the Henderson UK Property Fund, Henderson's flagship UK balanced property fund, from 2005-2009 where he lifted the fund from the bottom quartile of HSBC Pooled Funds Index to the top-quartile by actively managing his portfolio. In 2006, Mackenzie sold approximately 50% of the fund's assets by value to de-lever the portfolio in preparation for the down-turn.

Melford Capital Ltd was founded by Harry Hart in 2002 as a specialist investor concentrating on office-investment 'turnaround' situations in Central London.

Between 2002 and 2006 Melford acquired, managed and repositioned a number of assets in the West End including 78 Buckingham Gate, 66 Buckingham Gate, 2 Bessborough Gardens and 41-49 Great Peter St, generating exceptional returns for investors. Melford progressively withdrew from the market from 2005 onwards.

Gilbran, which was co-founded by Harry Hart in 1996, is the UK's leading specialist investor in automotive real estate.

Between 1996 and 2002 (when Hart exited via an MBO) the business acquired and developed over 200,000 sq. ft. of motor-retail premises in locations throughout the country. The group's strategy was based on successfully capitalising on the market's misunderstanding of the risks associated with the automotive sector.

www.gilbran.com

Arcadia Land plc, which was co-founded by Harry Hart in 1991, was established to capitalise on distressed conditions in the UK real estate market in the early 1990's. It specialised in acquiring 'yield-covenant' investments and between 1991 and 1997 management assembled a portfolio of office and mixed use investments in locations such as Amersham, Cambridge, London and Southampton. Management's strategy was to focus on acquiring assets that were perceived to be ex-growth (and thus heavily discounted) but which benefited from sound fundamentals.