French investment giant pays €21m for Tesco store in Gorey – The Irish Times October 09, 2019

Latest deal brings value of Corum’s portfolio in Ireland and Northern Ireland to €146m.

French asset management company, Corum, has increased its overall investment in Ireland and Northern Ireland to over €146 million with the acquisition of the Tesco supermarket in Gorey, Co Wexford, for about €21 million.

Tesco occupy the property under a 25-year lease from January 2014 with the lease containing a break option in just over nine years. The current rent of €1.57 million per annum is linked to consumer price index (CPI) alterations with a yearly cap of 3.5 per cent and a collar of -0.5 per cent. The deal will provide Corum with a net income return of about 6.9 per cent.

The subject property briefly comprises a “Tesco Extra” format supermarket extending to 8,109sq m (87,289sq ft) with 606 car-parking spaces at surface level on a site area of 3.44 hectares (8.5 acres).

Irish assets

Sean O’Neill of TWM acted on behalf of the vendor while Robert Murphy of Murphy Mulhall acted for the purchaser.

Corum’s purchase of the Wexford supermarket follows on from its €12.7 million acquisition earlier this year of South Point in Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock.

In 2017, the French investment giant paid €14 million to add the Joyce’s Court retail and office complex off Dublin’s Talbot Street to its then €80 million portfolio of Irish assets. The company had previously acquired Voxpro Office Park in Cork and another office complex in Galway as well as Harvey Norman’s retail store in Cork.

In 2018, Corum paid more than £16.4 million (€18.8 million) for 40-46 Donegall Place in Belfast city centre. The sale of the property, which is occupied by Next and Eason, represented the company’s first investment in the Northern Ireland market.