Gatehouse Bank, a London-based Sharia-compliant investment bank, has announced the successful delivery of its realised investment in UK real estate through the sale of two properties in a deal worth £34.4 million ($55.5 million).

The deal involving an UK student accommodation portfolio represents an excellent return for Gatehouse's investors, who have benefited from an internal rate of return of 18.6 per cent during the two-year holding period, and a return on investment of 37.2 per cent on exit, said a senior official.

'Over the past two years we have invested in the student accommodation sector on behalf of our investors, confident of the excellent return potential, which we believe we have successfully delivered in the realisation of the UK student accommodation portfolio investment,' remarked chairman Fahed Boodai.

'Gatehouse Bank was quick to seize the market opportunity to enable an impressive return on investment,' he observed.

'We promised that we would deliver a solid return to our investors, and we have achieved that result yielding a 9.1 per cent return in the first year, and an increase to 9.7 per cent in the second year,' said Boodai.

'When the time was right, we managed to deliver a successful exit result within two years, one year ahead of schedule as we have achieved our targeted returns,' he noted.

Importantly, we delivered the asset sale with a view to reward our investors with a profitable return on investment as a priority, rather than retain asset management fees for the additional holding period, he pointed out.

According to Boodai, Gatehouse has clearly demonstrated to its investor clients its ability to develop a commendable track record of transactional experience.

'This is due to our unrivalled expertise in the market, which includes a strong UK and US real estate team of originators, analysts, asset managers and a credit and market risk team who provide end-to-end commercial real estate solutions to investors,' he added.-TradeArabia News Service