McKillen: property interests

Irish investors are planning to offload the Fosse Park retail centre in Leicester in England for nearly €450m.

Investors in the scheme are said to include Paddy McKillen and Pádraig Drayne, who own the Jervis shopping centre in Dublin and are also involved in property in Belfast.

The investors are asking £360m for the park, the same price for which it was bought five years ago.

Fosse was built in 1989 and is regarded as one of the models on which the Blanchardstown Town Centre was based. One of the key reasons for its success – it has long been regarded as the most profitable development of its type in Britain – is that it has planning consent that allows high-street retailers such as Next and Burton alongside big box retailers such as Currys and PC World.

McKillen in particular has been shaking up his portfolio in recent months as he does not want his loans to be transferred to Nama. McKillen is one of the country's most successful businessmen, and owns half of a company whose assets include the Powerscourt Townhouse in Dublin city centre. He also owns a quarry in Vietnam and is known to have extensive property interests in Asia.

McKillen also has wide retail interests and has stakes in the Irish operations of Wagamama, Muji and Tower Records, and he was previously involved with Champion Sports. He also invested in projects involving Avestus, formerly Quinlan Private.

McKillen is planning to develop a small, 20-room hotel, arts centre, restaurant and open-air sculpture garden designed by starchitects such as Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano at Château La Coste winery at Aix-en-Provence in the south of France.