UBS and Reef in £900m investment to create life sciences cluster

One of Europe’s largest clusters for life science companies is to be created via a joint venture between UBS Asset Management and Reef Group to invest up to £900 million to develop land at a GSK research site in Stevenage.

UBS Asset Management, other unnamed investors and Reef, as development partner, have acquired 33 acres of land from GSK, the FTSE 100 drugs group, to create an estimated 1.4 million sq ft of laboratory and office facilities, providing space for up to 5,000 “highly skilled” new jobs. The Hertfordshire site hosts one of GSK’s two main global research and development facilities as well as the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, a biotechnology hub, and the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst.

GSK, which is being advised by Cushman & Wakefield, the commercial real estate services firm, believes the site has the potential to become Britain’s second-largest sector cluster, after Cambridge, for specialist commercial life sciences, excluding academia and the NHS.

The investment is set to be marked today by stakeholders, with the government and Dame Emma Walmsley, the chief executive of GSK, in attendance.

Construction of the new campus will begin next year and, subject to planning permission, parts of it will open for business in 2025. Talks with prospective tenants have begun. UBS is forecasting a £1.5 billion valuation on the site once it is developed.