Helaba refinances Tishman’s Paris office

Helaba has refinanced Tishman Speyer’s Cristalia office building in Paris with a €70m loan.

The five-year deal is thought to reflect a loan-to-value of slightly above 50%. The facility includes €10m for future capital expenditures and upgrades.

The bank said that “France is one of Helaba’s major target areas in real estate financing”, where it has had a branch since 2008. Its Paris office services institutional and private investors involved in the core real estate sectors. Margins in Helaba’s German homeland have tightened dramatically, often to below 100bps, and the French market is providing relatively appealing returns.

The eight-storey, 21,700 sq m Cristalia building is owned by Tishman’s European Core Fund (TSEC). It is located in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine. It is occupied entirely by Bristol-Myers-Squibb, a biopharmaceutical company.

Poor growth figures and concerns over France’s left wing government have led some investors to raise concerns over investing in the country, but Cushman & Wakefield research shows that its investment market saw €23.8bn of transactions in 2014, the third highest ever in a single year.

The deal follows Helaba’s €95m refinance of Quantum Global Real Estate and La Salle Investment Management’s Tour Blanche in the city and its €280m underwrite of a debt package for a Korean investment group for its purchase of the Sanofi headquarters at 54 Rue La Boetie, both of which completed last October.