January/February 2014 Issue

Orchard Street Investment Management is seeking more good-quality property to asset manage after winning a new investor client. Orchard Street will invest £250m of capital, including modest gearing, in UK property for the Middle Eastern investor. “Our client was keen to invest with a trusted adviser,” said Orchard Street’s managing partner, Philip Gadsden. “Our ambition […]

FRS 102, the long-awaited replacement of the UK’s Generally Accepted Accounting Practice, is due to come into place next January for most small and medium-sized companies with accounting periods ending 31 December 2015. Generally speaking, it brings smaller companies in line with larger ones. While this new accounting standard is still to be finalised and […]

UK market overview Average secondary market pricing improved across all UK sectors last month, capping an inward shift of around 7% for the 12 months to date, writes Ashley Marks. Pricing is being  driven by limited supply and strong investor demand, coinciding with positive returns for most of the balanced funds (see table). Balanced funds […]

Investment volumes for 2013 hit a post-crash high The total investment volume in 2013 was £51.52bn, the best since the 2008 UK property crash. Investment in the last quarter was £14.5bn not as high as Q3’s £16.4bn, but the highest Q4 level since the financial crisis. Overseas investors and UK institutions dominated the market, accounting […]

Real Estate Capital commentary The cheapest debt across Europe is still to be found in Germany, according to investment manager Tristan Capital Partners. It financed €190.5m of purchases of three shopping centres in Austria and Germany, plus a Berlin office, with German pfandbrief banks at an average margin of around 180- 185 basis points. All […]

Lauren Parr profiles six leading servicers and their plans to diversify into new roles and markets

Servicers are targeting new business lines ahead of CMBS work-outs drying up, writes Lauren Parr

Bank of England refocuses low-cost lending scheme to target small firms, reports Alex Catalano

Few banks will act as depositaries for smaller property fund launches, reports Doug Morrison

A better business environment, an end to the debt drought, willingness to take on more risk and growing interest in Spain are the key trends for this year, according to report editor Alex Catalano

Last year saw property debt capital markets starting to recover. The volume of debt issued as CMBS to finance European real estate trebled, albeit off a very low base, from €2.7bn to €8.2bn. The market’s re-opening helped to refinance more than half of a near €10bn spike of German multi-family housing loans that all matured […]

Italian asset manager Fabrica and CBRE Global Investors have won their first joint mandate, to advise Italian legal profession pension fund Cassa Forense on pan-European investment. Cassa Forense is seeking greater international diversification and has made an initial €200m of equity available for the new Cicerone Fund. CBRE GI will buy core UK, French and […]

US financial services firm to focus on £100m tickets in European debt

Fortress-managed Eurocastle and European investment group GWM are seeking to buy into an anticipated Italian property recovery via an offer for part of a €500m listed Italian fund. On 7 January GWM and Eurocastle announced an offer for 40% of the units in UniCredito Immobiliare Uno, a closed-ended fund launched in 1999 by Italy’s UniCredit […]

Aalto Invest has lent £60m to Benson Elliot to finance three regional offices in need of asset management. The loan is the largest to date and the first bilateral loan for investment manager Aalto, which entered UK senior debt investing last year, initially by taking participations in syndications. Aalto hired former RBS non-core real estate […]

UBS Global Asset Management’s Global Real Estate business has raised £140m for a new UK debt fund from Mitsubishi Corporation, a Netherlands pension fund and UBS’s own balance sheet. “The two external investors comprise the bulk of the capital,” said the fund’s manager, Anthony Shayle, who is also UBS’s head of global real estate. Mitsubishi, […]

UK REIT wins Dutch industrial portfolio and recapitalises German assets via two loan purchases

Germany’s Corealcredit Bank will remain an independent subsidiary after its takeover by Aareal Bank in the next few months. After almost a year of negotiations, Aareal Bank has acquired the smaller German lender from Lone Star for €342m, subject to contractually agreed adjustments until the closing date. Corealcredit focuses on German commercial real estate lending […]

Tristan Capital Partners has financed its €190.5m purchases of three shopping centres in Austria and Germany, plus a Berlin office, with cheap debt from German pfandbrief banks. Tristan bought Shopping Centre Nord in the Floridsdorf district of Vienna for €75m, and Walle-Centre in Bremen for €32m, on behalf of its EPISO3 opportunity fund, in deals […]

Fund has invested over €90m in Germany but is also targeting the UK

New firm takes master servicing work from rival in first transfer of its kind

Former Valad director Paul Oliver is launching a fund to support student housing development in the UK. Curlew Student Trust has £40m of seed capital from investor clients of CBRE Global Multi Manager. Oliver has bought three schemes being built by student accommodation developer Watkins Jones, in Sheffield, Swansea and Birmingham, with 1,091 beds. The […]

M&G investment role for Brown Tony Brown joined M&G Real Estate this month as chief investment officer and member of the real estate board. He was most recently EMEA managing director at Lend Lease, with responsibility for £2bn of property and £2.5bn of infrastructure assets on behalf of 50 global investors. Before that, he was […]

Aareal, ABN Amro and Deutsche Hypo join ING to refinance CBRE fund

CBRE Loan Servicing has been appointed this month as the primary servicer on Colony Capital’s Spanish loan portfolio, Project Alpha. Colony bought the €215m, three-loan package from Lloyds Bank in November. They are secured against office and retail assets in Madrid and Murcia. The loans will be managed from CBRELS’ London office, run by European […]

Barclays is financing a regional portfolio that Harwood Real Estate bought from the Co-op in December for about £120m. The bank provided a £76m loan, managed and funded by Barclays’ Edinburgh Corporate Banking office. The mixed-quality portfolio includes retail warehouses, shops and industrial properties; the blended initial yield was in the region of 7.5%. Harwood […]

Valad Europe has €1bn of gross capital to invest in European markets including the UK, Germany, Spain and France. Up to €450m could be invested in the UK and Germany for Valad European Diversified Fund, Valad chief investment officer David Kirkby said. The new fund, which began investing late last year, has initial equity of […]

Just 6.8% of European survey respondents plan to cut property holdings

Boost from German residential issues in 2013 is unlikely to be repeated, says Standard & Poor’s

CarVal Investors has purchased Friends Life Finance’s remaining €240m mixed loan book in Ireland. The US alternative investment manager paid between €40m and €50m for the portfolio in a public auction process dubbed Project Magenta. Irish commercial real estate loans, secured mostly against operating business-backed real estate, make up about 25% of the portfolio, which […]

Hotel chain’s owners seek around €500m of senior debt, which one or two US banks may take on and syndicate, plus up to €150m of mezzanine