Trinity College has completed the £24m acquisition of Meridian Delta Dome Limited (MDDL), the holding company which owns a 999-year lease on the O2 Arena site in Greenwich, London.

AEG Europe, the owner and operator of the O2 Arena venue, will not be affected by the deal, which will see the college - part of the University of Cambridge - receive a share of ticket sales through the rental income paid by AEG Europe. Quintain Estates and Lend Lease Europe, the two property firms behind the MDDL joint venture, will continue to manage the regeneration of the surrounding 150-acre (61-hectare) site through the Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration Limited venture.

The sale of its 49 per cent stake in MDDL to Trinity College for £11.8m as part of the deal will now enable Quintain Estates to exceed a £50m target it hoped to raise in repatriated cash for the year ending 31 March 2010. Rebecca Worthington, Quintain Estates' finance director, said: "We have already exceeded our full year target of repatriating £50m, strengthening our balance sheet even further. The strategy we announced in August 2008 has now resulted in a total of £152.8m of cash being repatriated."

The rental income generated by ticket sales at the O2 Arena last year amounted to around £1.6m. Image: Britain on View