Matt Moulding sells Manchester airport business park for £180m

Matt Moulding has finally sold the business park he owns next to Manchester airport, and which is tenanted by his THG ecommerce group, for £180 million.
Icon business park has been the headquarters of THG since it opened three years ago and is owned by Moulding Capital Limited, Moulding’s personal investment vehicle.
Moulding, 52, tried to sell the site last year, but a £200 million deal with ICG Real Estate, the property investor, fell through given the turbulence in the commercial property market.
He has now sold the five warehouses and the office that make up the business park to RN3 Partners, a new investor set up by Marius Barnett, the former Glencore executive. Icon will be the first asset in RN3’s portfolio.
With a purported sale price of £180 million, it would be the biggest warehouse deal this year outside London, according to Green Street News, the property industry news site that first reported the transaction.
A spokesman for THG and Moulding Capital declined to comment. A spokesman for RN3 confirmed the acquisition but would not comment further.
THG, formerly The Hut Group, was founded in Manchester in 2004 by Moulding and John Gallemore, a fellow former Phones4u executive, to sell CDs online. After numerous acquisitions it has grown to include 300 websites, beauty brands, online retailers and two hotels in Manchester.
As part of its flotation in September 2020, which valued the group at £5.4 billion, THG sold off a number of its property assets to Moulding. THG paid its founder £14.2 million in rent last year, and £15.8 million in 2022.
Moulding’s role as a landlord to the company he founded, runs and is a major shareholder of has drawn criticism in the past. Around the time THG floated, analysts at JP Morgan highlighted “potential conflicts of interest”.
Also at that time, Pirc, the shareholder advisory consultancy, warned that the relationship between THG and Moulding risked “disincentivising the company from negotiating down rental rises which is what so many counterparts have been forced to do during the Covid-19 pandemic”.
The company has repeatedly played down concerns about conflict of interest and after its flotation set up a committee to oversee and approve any related-party transactions.
Warehouse values have fallen by about 25 per cent since the spring of 2022, dragged down by the rapid rise in interest rates. However, landlords and agents have reported a stabilisation in values in recent months. David Sleath, the chief executive of Segro, one of Europe’s biggest warehouse owners, said over the summer that the market was “probably now somewhere near the bottom”.