Alejandrina Catalano

Last month, Fitch Ratings begged to differ with Standard & Poor’s and DBRS over their ratings of the £251m/€131m Mint hotels CMBS. Fitch, which was not mandated on the deal, wouldn’t have rated the senior classes as triple-A, it said.

Our panel of industry figures discuss the widening range of deals becoming available to Europe's private equity and opportunistic buyers, as a growing field of lenders compete to back higher-risk assets. Opportunistic capital is gushing into European real estate, looking to scoop up good deals while borrowing costs stay low and markets recover. In the past 15 months, funds targeting European opportunistic and value-added real estate have raised €20.2bn of equity, while another €9.4bn has gone into European real estate debt strategies, according to PERE Research and Analytics.

PERE Research and Analytics’ monitoring shows 69 debt funds in the market this month, seeking a total of $34.5bn.

After 30 years writing about real estate finance, I’ve been doing a rather indulgent thing: looking back over that period of real estate history. “Inflation is low, money is cheap and banks are lending freely on commercial property. Lenders and borrowers are on a roll,” I wrote– spookily, exactly 16 years ago, at the end of June, 1999. […]

The Bank of England says it supports lower capital requirements for investors in high quality securitisations.

Wereldhave, the European shopping and office specialist, has raised €211m via a US private placement. The notes are denominated in four currencies: €120m, £35m, $US30m, $C20m, and with an average weighted maturity of 12.3 years

French REIT Gecina has placed a €500m, nine-year bond carrying a coupon of 2%, 115bps over the mid-swap rate. The latest issue was taken up by a large pan-European base, the company said. The funds will be used to refianance some of the corporate credit facilities related to last week's €1.24bn purchase of two landmark office assets in Paris from Ivanhoé Cambridge: PSA group’s historic headquarters in central Paris near L'Arc de Triomphe and the T1&B towers in La Défense.