A WEALTHY American family and an offshore investment trust have provided the £100million for the purchase of Blackburn shopping centre.

In a complex deal, current owners Standard Life have effectively sold the remaining 140 years of the lease it had from Blackburn with Darwen Council for the site and its car park.

Reit Asset Management has an investment portfolio of offices, industrial units, warehouses, shopping centres, hotels and nursing homes valued at more than £2billion. It is no stranger to East Lancashire, having bought Arndale Shopping Centre in Accrington for £22.3million in December 2001 and sold it to another investment company for £28million in April.

REIT has a track record of funding improvements if they will lead to a higher return on investments. It has also announced plans to build a bingo hall at the Valley Leisure complex it owns near Bolton.

Hyndburn Council leader Peter Britcliffe said the firm had made some improvements to the Arndale, but added: "It changes hands a lot and each owner has made some improvements but it is a small shopping centre."

Blackburn is much bigger, costing nearly four times as much.

Standard Life wants to assign the shopping centre lease to a new "off the shelf" company which will be called the Blackburn Centre Limited Partnership.

This would be "guaranteed" or backed by another property investment company, Ashpol PLC, but the centre would be managed by Reit Asset Management.

Ashpol and Reit share the same registered office and a number of directors are common to both companies.

The decision to put the shopping centre in the hands of an 'off-the-shelf' company serves a simple purpose. It keeps the investments of the two parties which have funded the deal separate from all the other transactions REIT carries out for its other investors.

Coun Andy Kay, boss of regeneration at the council, said: "We have a 16 per cent stake in the shopping centre so before we would agree to the deal we had to make sure our investment was protected with the new company having enough clout. They appear to have a track record of investing in shopping centres and hopefully the same will happen here."

Blackburn with Darwen Council's executive board gave its backing to the sale on Thursday night, after being told officers were confident that it was a good move for Blackburn.

The deal with Reit follows the collapse of talks between Standard Life and Everard Goodman's Tops Estates.