The Carlyle Group sells Pure Student Living to LetterOne Treasury Services for €731 mln (UK)

Global alternative asset manager, the Carlyle Group announces that it has sold Pure Student Living, London’s premier purpose built student accommodation business, to LetterOne Treasury Services for a total consideration of £532 mln (€731 mln).
Pure Student Living comprises 2,170 rooms across five central London sites. Four of the assets, located at Highbury, Hammersmith, Bankside and City, are fully operational while the fifth facility at Whitechapel, will deliver a further 417 rooms when it completes in August.
Carlyle entered the London student accommodation market in 2010 when it acquired the Highbury site on behalf of its third pan-European real estate fund, Carlyle European Real Estate Partners III, and it has subsequently grown Pure Student Living into one of the capital’s foremost student housing portfolios.
The transaction has been structured to complete in two phases with the first comprising the acquisition of the four operational assets, with the deal to fully complete when Pure Whitechapel is delivered in summer 2015.
The portfolio has been managed by Generation Estates, a specialist developer and operator that will be retained to manage the construction works at Whitechapel.
Commenting on the transaction, Mark Harris, Managing Director at The Carlyle Group, said: “Having first entered the London student accommodation market over five years ago at a time when there was little equity, debt or appetite for development, we have subsequently built Pure into one of London’s foremost student living portfolios. The sale of this high quality portfolio, against a far more robust and certain economic backdrop, represents a successful result for this investment.”
Carlyle’s advisors for the transaction were BLP and JLL Corporate Finance.
Source: The Carlyle Group