Arsenal’s profits rise as property is snapped up
PROPERTY entrepreneurs Raymond Mould and Patrick Vaughan yesterday swooped on Highbury Square, the residential property project being developed by Arsenal football club.
The duo, who head up Aim-listed property group London & Stamford, have purchased 146 apartments plus 98 garage spaces for £41.4m.
The deal comes to the aid of Arsenal, which has been struggling to sell the 655 apartments that have been developed on the site of the club’s former Highbury stadium.
Following the deal, Arsenal has completed on 445 out of 655 units, but at prices considerably lower than envisaged when the project began.
There had been suggestions that a Far Eastern buyer was going to buy a similar number of apartments but that now seems unlikely.
News of the apartments’ sale came as Arsenal Holdings, the club’s parent company, unveiled that pre-tax profits had risen to £45.5m from £36.7m the year before.
Group turnover, including from the club’s property arm, rose from £223m to £313.3m.
Revenues from the football part of the business rose more modestly from £207.7m to £225.1m.
Group debt has come down from £318.1m to £297.7m, but that is still too high for Alisher Usmanov, the club’s 25 per cent plus shareholder who wanted Arsenal to hold a rights issue.
Mould and Vaughan have worked together for the past 40 years, first with Arlington and then with Pillar Properties.
The Arsenal development is London & Stamford’s sixth deal this year. Other deals involve snapping up half a stake in British Land’s Meadowhall shopping centre for £588m and acquiring City offices One Fleet Place for £74m. The two property veterans had previously ruled out the residential sector, but were won over by the Highbury flats, which range from 750ft one-bedroomed apartments to five penthouses.