Quintain Estates gets £97m for Greenwich Peninsula office block Pier Walk

Quintain Estates and its co-developer, Lend Lease, today sold the first office block they have developed in Greenwich Peninsula, the finger of land opposite Canary Wharf which is home to the O2 Arena.

German property fund Deka Immobilien is paying £97.1 million for the seven-storey, 198,000 sq ft block, which is fully let to Transport for London on a 10-year lease.

That is some £1.1 million more than Quintain said it hoped to achieve when it put the property up for sale in April. It is also a 6% uplift on the last book value.

Quintain said the deal included the lease back to it for no rent of seven retail units on the ground floor. Five of these are under offer to "major retail and restaurant brands" it said. The seven-storey building consists of two blocks of office accommodation linked by a central atrium.

Quintain shares rose 2½p to 43½p.

Adrian Wyatt, chief executive of Quintain, said the sale demonstrated the strength of the independent valuation of Quintain's assets at Greenwich Peninsula in a tough trading environment, and would enable the company to recycle the proceeds into new opportunities with potential for higher returns.