Acquisition: Easistore Group
Crowe advised long-standing client, the Easistore group and its shareholders on a substantial group reorganisation and subsequent successful sale of the group to Midco Enterprise Limited — a JVCo of global investment manager, Nuveen Global and self-storage giant, Stor-Age Property REIT. Nuveen will partner with one of the UK’s leading operators, Storage King, to leverage their operational expertise.
Easistore is a successful, high-quality self-storage business with more than 30 years of experience providing storage solutions for households and businesses in addition to office space. The Easistore portfolio comprises of four sites totalling c.240,000 sq. ft, and consist of modern, bespoke, purpose-built properties located across the South East of England including Crawley, Edenbridge, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells.
Storage King operate secure storage facilities at a huge variety of locations across the UK. Nuveen Real Estate is one of the largest investment managers in the world with over 85 years of real estate investing experience and more than 765 employees located across 30+ cities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific.
The partnership with Nuveen and Storage King has seen the parties enter into a joint venture, with Storage King taking a minority stake in the joint venture and contributing 10% of the equity capital. The portfolio will be branded and managed by Storage King under its third-party management platform – Management 1st.
This substantial project involved a large legal team from Cripps. The Cripps’ team worked together to project manage the various aspects of this highly complex transaction through to completion. Simon Warne from Crowe, separated the principal trade from non-core assets that Storage King would not be acquiring, by way of a reduction of capital demerger.
Crowe's role and team
Crowe provided tax advice from Simon Warne and Corporate finance services led by Geert Struyven and Kieran Lambe to the vendors.
Client quote
Crowe have been my trusted advisors for many years so I had no hesitation to appoint the Crowe Corporate Finance to assist on the sale of our family business. Geert and Kieran provided us with pro-active advice and guided me and the management team through the potential pitfalls of the various offers for the business. Their insight into the process and deal experience was invaluable and ensured that any potentially contentious points were identified and negotiated early on. I highly recommend them.
Paul Glenister, Managing Director, Easistore(UK) Limited
