The owner of Braehead shopping centre in Glasgow has secured a refinancing deal worth nearly £450 million.

SGS Group, which also owns the Lakeside in Essex, atria in Watford, and Victoria Centre in Nottingham, declared the recapitalisation was a vote of confidence in the performance of the sites. Each site has a diverse range of retail, food and beverage, and leisure tenants, with an average occupancy rate of 93%. Tenants include major names such as Next, Primark, Boots, and H&M.

OakNorth, the digital bank “for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs”, has partnered Lloyds to provide a £445m club loan to SGS Group.

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Jaap Tonckens, non-executive chairman of SGS Group, said: “These leading retail and leisure assets have gone from strength to strength over the past four years. The overwhelming support for the recapitalisation reflects this very strong performance and investor confidence in prime shopping centres. We were impressed by OakNorth’s expert knowledge of the UK’s commercial real estate sector throughout the entire transaction. I look forward to being a part of the next phase of the SGS journey to build upon the achievements to date.”

Max Saidman, director of debt finance at OakNorth, added: “This transaction represented OakNorth with an attractive opportunity to back four significant and highly successful retail assets.

“All four sites have seen robust year-on-year growth to footfall and occupancy rates, reflecting the positive consumer demand for shopping centres in the South East, Midlands, and Scotland. Furthermore, with UK consumer confidence rising to its highest level in more than two years earlier this year see the attractiveness of these sites getting stronger moving forward.”