Savills was appointed in May 2017 to provide development consultancy advice on Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity’s (GSTC) 5.5 acre Royal Street site located opposite St Thomas’ Hospital at Waterloo, along with the world heritage Palace of Westminster.
GSTC’s primary objectives were to maximise a blend of capital receipts and revenue, protect the charity’s health and wellbeing agenda, work with key stakeholder/ partner objectives, and protect long term legacy.
For this, our experts led the design team to shape a robust mixed use scheme on which to base pre-application planning engagement, financial analysis, transaction structure and marketing strategy advice.
We built a bespoke development cash flow model to test various deal structures and sensitivities, such as joint venture scenarios, leasehold vs freehold and variations in level of gearing etc. Pre-marketing engagement was undertaken with St Thomas’ Hospital in relation to their vision a new Med Tech cluster, and a 350,000 sq ft outpatients and office pre-let requirement. We advised our client on the funding, programme and value implications of this.
The charity is pleased with the high service level delivery we have received from Savills. They have provided consistently high quality advice to the charity across all aspects of the Royal Street project: upfront development consultancy advice, detailed financial and transaction structure analysis and a targeted global marketing campaign. Royal Street represents a significant portion of the Charity’s property portfolio value and we have found the Savills team diligent, entrepreneurial and responsive to the particular needs of the charity throughout.
G. Macdonald, Property Director, Guy's & St Thomas' Charity
Savills then implemented a targeted, global marketing campaign, based on face-to-face meetings with senior decision makers at relevant entities, and high quality marketing material.
Once the preferred bidder was selected, Savills worked extremely closely with the legal team, representing the charity throughout the complex contract negotiation period to exchange.
Our team produced detailed reports and presented key points to GSTC’s investment committee and trustee board throughout the process.
Throughout the project Savills managed a robust and auditable approach at all times, in keeping with client governance, and complex relationships with stakeholders, partners etc. Subsequently, GSTC received 14 robust bids at first stage in November 2018. We ran through a structured second and third round process, maintaining competitive tension throughout. Baupost and Stanhope were selected as preferred bidder in April 2019 and the development agreement contracts exchanged in February 2020. Savills will be retained in an ongoing advisory capacity.