Kuwait – Mubasher: Global Investment House, a regional Asset Management and Investment Banking firm headquartered in Kuwait, said Monday that has unconditionally contracted to acquire two Grade-A commercial office space properties, in the greater Manchester area, UK.

Structured as one transaction, this acquisition provides Global Investors a sharia compliant structure enjoying a stabilised income stream with strong rental growth prospects and expected annualised cash dividends of 9%, according to a statement.

Nasser Al-Khaled, head of real estate asset management at Global, commented, “This deal demonstrates our strong ability to originate transactions that carry significant untapped value. Manchester is a market which we have monitored for a while but we were very careful with our asset selection and timing, given where the prevailing valuation levels stood in the past and where they stand today,”.

“Following record leasing in 2014, and 2015 and continued demand in 2016, the acute shortage of Grade A supply is expected to result in an unprecedented complete absence of ‘ready to occupy’ Grade A space in Manchester. In the absence of new available space, Manchester will remain a landlord’s office market and we expect rents to rise in the medium term which would also spill over to Manchester’s sub-markets where our recently acquired assets are located,” he added.

Sulaiman Al-Rubaie, executive vice president and head of alternative asset management, said, “We are very happy with the strong performance of our UK Real Estate program and look forward to expand this successful program to exploit further opportunities in continental Europe and the United States,”.

“This is the fifth transaction completed by Global’s real estate asset management team in almost two years and we look forward to expand our real estate assets under management to USD 1 billion in the next several years,” he added.