Qatar Holding, the investment arm of the Middle East country’s sovereign-wealth fund, agreed to pay £900 million ($ 1.4 billion) for a 20 per cent stake in BAA Ltd., which owns London’s Heathrow airport, Europe’s busiest hub.

Qatar Holding will acquire a 10.62 per cent stake in FGP Topco Ltd., BAA’s parent company, from Ferrovial SA for £478 million, the Spanish infrastructure company said in a statement on Saturday.

Qatar Holding also agreed to buy a 5.63 per cent stake from Britannia Airport Partners and 3.75 percent from GIC Special Investments Pte Ltd., according to the statement.

“The sale of this stake in BAA is part of Ferrovial’s strategy of establishing a market valuation of our assets and improving the structure of our investment portfolio,” Ferrovial Chief Executive Officer Inigo Meiras said in the statement.

Qatar uses wealth accumulated from the world’s third-largest gas reserves to acquire regional and European assets.

Qatar Holding bought Harrods Ltd. in 2010, and the sovereign wealth fund has taken an 11.6 per cent stake in Swiss miner Xstrata Plc.

The deal is pending regulatory approval and is expected to be closed by year end, Ferrovial said. The transaction will help the Madrid-based company boost liquidity and gain “flexibility to undertake investments in infrastructure and services projects,” it said. Barclays Plc advised Qatar on the deal, a spokesman for the London-based bank said via e-mail.

“Even though Ferrovial wasn’t as highly leveraged as other construction companies such as ACS or Sacyr, the deal makes perfect sense as BAA is a very liquid asset and helps the Spanish firm boost its financial structure,” Francisco Salvador, a Madrid-based analyst at FGA/MG Valores, said by phone.

Meanwhile, Qatar was the top sovereign wealth buyer of European property in the last 12 months, spending 3.5 billion euros ($ 4.3 billion) on eight deals including the London Olympic athlete’s village and a mall on Paris’ Champs Elysees, data from a research firm showed.

For Qatar, the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), that spending during the year to mid-August equals only about six weeks of revenue from its LNG exports, according to Reuters calculations.

Sovereign wealth funds view top-quality property in the best locations as a safe bet in the global financial crisis.

“For sovereign wealth funds like the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), property deals are about wealth preservation, not returns,” said Joseph Kelly, director of market analysis at Real Capital Analytics (RCA).