UK Property Giants Accumulate Forces to Benefit from Bargaining

In challenging market conditions three property giants – Great Portland Estates, Shaftesbury and Big Yellow – are going to raise funds, which will amount to £330m to take advantage of the purchase of bargain buildings during the decline.
Great Portland, a West End property specialist that possesses the headquarters of the fashion retailer New Look, is implied to raise funds of between £120 million and £150 million by a rights issue. Probably this measure will be implemented as soon as Great Portland announces full-year results at the end of this week.
Despite the recession, the Great Portland company is widely recognized as the property winner of the crisis and has shown flexible performance. Analysts say that Shaftesbury can also be considered as one of the best players of the property market. The company possesses a solid part of London’s Chinatown,  Carnaby Street and parts of Covent Garden. To keep pace with Great Portland and Big Yellow, Shaftesbury is preparing to extract from its funds approximately £150 million to build a new “West End village” or to enlarge its existing property items.
Meanwhile, Big Yellow considers to raise around £25-£30 million to start the construction of new sites in London and Guildford. The financial plans could also be confirmed this week because the company is going to announce its full-year figures tomorrow.
Market watchers said that Big Yellow’s issuing will be in a form of offering shares for a short period of time, with little to no marketing.
Experts predict that if the fundraising is continued, they would be priced at only a slight discount to the existing share price – unlike deeply discounted issues of their larger rivals over the past few months.
On the other hand specialists say that performance of Songbird leaves much to be desired. Songbird is the company that owns a majority part of Canary Wharf. At the moment its shareholders could be under pressure to pay off a part of Citigroup loan at £800 million, which is due to expire in May 2010.
Experts are sure that talks over the loan are more likely to stay unsolved until the end of the year.