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Whatever happened to Mapeley? The one-time outsourcing leader has been conspicuously quiet since it was taken private by Fortress Investments in March 2009, shortly after it was bailed out by the US private equity firm to the tune of 45m.
This week, a Fitch ratings note sheds some light on the health of a chunk of Mapele/s portfolio (page 31 ). R covers a bundle of loans securitised by Deutsche Bank in 2006 and which has been dragged up the risk scale - in Fitch's view - by a £226¿m loan to Mapeley.
The debt was used to finance 24 direct office investments. In short, many of these assets, which total 1.7m sq ft, are in secondary locations in the South East, and vacancy rates are up, income is down and three buildings - accounting for 170,000 sq ft - are empty.
This seems to bear out criticism of Mapeley* change of strategy back in 2004.
The fledgling outsourcing market had brought...