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Intu buyout deal axed,长沙USDT兑换便捷 malls giant stays upbeat despite challengesBy

Sandra Halliday Published
November 29, 2025

A succession of negotiation extensions around the Intu buyout deal have come to…. absolutely nothing. The news finally came on Thursday that the deal isn’t happening with the consortium that had approached it in early October not now planning to table a formal bid. The reason? It looks like the faltering UK economy and tough retail market are to blame.

The consortium had included the malls giant’s deputy chairman John Whittaker and had been talking of offering 210.4p a share with Intu saying “good progress [on talks] was made” and nothing worrying had shown up in the due diligence that had been done.

The shares fell almost 40% in early Thursday trading as the news added to the uncertainty around Intu after its proposed merger with Hammerson was also axed by its retail peer this spring.

So what exactly went wrong? Intu said that “the consortium has announced today that, given the uncertainty around current macroeconomic conditions and the potential near-term volatility across markets, [it] is not able to proceed with an offer within a timeframe which is manageable within the confines of the [takeover] code timetable.”

It added that while market sentiment towards retail and retail property remains negative, it’s “confident of its commercial prospects, which are underpinned by market leadership in UK regional shopping centres, clear focus on the highest quality assets and resilient operational performance in a challenging market.”

The company, which owns a £9.6 billion portfolio of 17 prime regional centres in the UK and three in Spain is certainly one of the biggest names in UK shopping centre retail and its locations get around 400 million annual customer visits. It owns “eight of the top-20 centres in the UK and three of the top-10 in Spain.”

CHALLENGES AHEAD

To support its belief in itself, it released a trading update, despite having issued one only a month ago, although the new update was far-from-impressive. 

Intu said it “expects a further year of like-for-like net rental income growth in 2025, with full-year growth estimated to be in the range of 0% to 1% (subject to no further material tenant failures), with the expected outturn having been impacted by some 1.5% from tenant failures in the year.”

That statement underlined the challenges the company faces in a difficult market with the bank of England’s assessment of the UK economy post-Brexit adding further weight to any negative views when it was released on Wednesday.

But Intu had some more upbeat news. It said that in the nine months to 30 September 2025, it signed 200 new leases (2025’s year-to-date was 176 leases) producing £32 million of new annual rent, “7% above previous passing rent”. 

“Encouragingly, tenants invested an estimated £64 million in fitting out, upgrading and expanding stores in this period,” it added, although year-on year that didn’t look so special as the figure for the 2025 full year was £89 million.

It also commented on the House of Fraser row that will see four HoF stores closing in its malls. HoF accounts for 1% of its annual rent roll and while the closures "will reduce rental income and increase vacancy costs in 2025,” it’s “looking forward to the opportunity to re-engineer and repurpose these stores with new and exciting alternatives already under consideration.”

However, the HoF situation also makes the 0% to 1% growth figure it quoted above look a bit worse as those stores are excluded from the calculations because they’re “now redevelopment projects.”

It also said that “reflecting current negative sentiment towards UK retail property, Intu's property values reduced by around 9% in the first nine months of 2025.”

But it concluded: “Following the withdrawal of the possible offer, Intu intends to re-engage with major shareholders and also complete the appointment of a successor to the current chief executive where the search is ongoing.”

(责任编辑：Culture)