Capital Legal Services has advised ADG Group on the engagement of the Lenta hypermarket chain as an anchor tenant for 36 of its 39 district shopping and entertainment centers.
Lenta is one of the largest retail chains in Russia and the country's second largest hypermarket chain. The company, which was founded in 1993 in St. Petersburg, currently operates 122 hypermarkets in 63 cities across Russia and 27 supermarkets in the Moscow region with a total of approximately 787,807 square meters of selling space. Lenta’s largest shareholders include TPG Capital, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and VTB Capital.
According to CLS, the deal "makes the ADG Group project a very interesting one for potential tenants of various formats," and "Lenta, in turn, has in a single swoop gained the opportunity to substantially increase its market presence on the Moscow market."
CLS refers to the "general complexity of the deal ... mostly due to the fact that it was negotiated at the initial stage of the ADG Group project on reconstructing Soviet movie theaters into modern recreation centers."
According to ADG Group Managing Partner Grigoriy Pecherskiy: “This transaction is the largest package lease deal on the Moscow commercial real estate market both by the number of facilities and by the floor area. It was important for us to find an experienced partner with a spotless reputation, quality portfolio and thought-out strategy for providing legal support for this transaction, and Capital Legal Services became such partner. We are pleased with the work done and, most importantly, with the achieved results.”
