AUSTRALIAN property company Lend Lease Corporation is to sell its 30 per cent stake in Bluewater, the out-of-town shopping centre at Greenhithe, near Dartford.

Greg Clarke, chief executive, told the Financial Times that large fixed assets such as Bluewater “don’t really belong on the balance sheet of an industrial organisation like ourselves, they belong in an asset-owning organisation".

He said the asset would be sold when the company could get the best price for shareholders.

“We will divest,” he said. “What I do not want to do is give it too much of a sense of urgency because it will not be this year, it might not be next year. It will be when the value proposition will be right for our shareholders.”

Lend Lease developed Bluewater with a number of partners, principally Whitecliff Properties, a company that emerged from Blue Circle.

Sales at Bluewater went up nine per cent in the past year. While the number of shoppers visiting the centre stayed flat at 27 million, they spent more. Total revenue at Bluewater went up to £800m in the year to March, the centre’s fourth year of trading.