LondonMetric and Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust (SREIT) have agreed the terms of a £404m all-share takeover deal for Picton.
Under the terms of the deal, Picton shareholders will receive 0.190 LondonMetric shares and 0.894 SREIT shares per Picton share held.
Based on the closing price of 198p per LondonMetric share and 45.9p per SREIT share on 30 July 2026, the acquisition values each Picton Share at 78.7p and the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of Picton at approximately £404m.
Following completion of the acquisition, Picton shareholders are expected to hold approximately 4% of the enlarged issued share capital of LondonMetric and approximately 48.4% of the enlarged issued share capital of SREIT.
LondonMetric currently owns approximately 11.1% of the voting rights of SREIT, which will reduce to approximately 5.7% on completion of the acquisition.
Andrew Jones, chief executive of LondonMetric, said: “The acquisition builds upon our ambition to increase the scale of our business, leverage our efficient platform and opportunistically deploy capital to drive the quantum and quality of our earnings. It is another corporate transaction that adds high quality and reversionary assets and further consolidates our position as the UK’s leading NNN lease REIT. It provides a compelling solution to Picton’s material and persistent share price discount, and enables their shareholders to roll into two quality listed platforms with better share liquidity, greater income granularity and material earnings and dividend accretion.”
Alastair Hughes, chair of SREIT, added: “This is a transformational and strategically important transaction for the company, offering a material increase in the size of the portfolio whilst maintaining the focus on the higher growth multi-let industrial and retail warehouse sectors. Shareholders will benefit from immediate earnings accretion, aided by improved cost efficiencies and a further strengthening of the balance sheet, with sector leading low-cost, long-term debt. The combined portfolio additionally provides greater diversity of income and a blended embedded reversion of over 8%, further increasing the opportunity to actively drive faster growth and dividend progression.”
Francis Salway, chair of Picton, said: “Following the announcement of our strategic review at the start of the year, I am pleased that this transaction delivers a very material uplift in both EPRA earnings and dividend income for our shareholders. Beyond these immediate financial benefits, it will provide enhanced liquidity and meaningful economies of scale.”
