Credit Suisse and BAWAG are said to be lined up to provide circa €245m of financing for Lone Star’s purchase of a Dutch office portfolio from CBRE Global Investors.
Lone Star acquired the good-quality assets from CBRE Global Investors’ €1.56bn CBRE Dutch Office Fund for a purchase price of around €350m. Leverage equates to about 70% loan-to-value.
CBRE Global Investors’ disposal will see incumbent lender, ING, repaid.
The buildings are located in core office markets in Holland and the tenants the portfolio does have are strong, but vacancy overall is high. This is thought to be the appeal for Lone Star, which will employ its subsidiary Husdson Advisors to asset manage the properties. Lone Star has exposure to the Dutch office market through the troubled MPC portfolio which it bought into in 2009.
The Dutch office market suffered particularly badly throughout the downturn owing to significant oversupply in all but the most prime locations. Parts of the market are now seen to be bottoming out and financing for assets is coming back.
Several pension funds bought into CBRE GIs’ Dutch office fund last month. The manager has split the assets into strategic, and non-strategic portfolios – the latter earmarked for sale. In December, Blackstone picked up six offices from the fund totalling about 70,000 sq m, in locations including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Weenatoren and The Hague.
The fund owns approximately 59 assets including the World Trade Center Amsterdam.
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