Featured

ING Real Estate Finance has provided €85 million of fresh debt to Italian property company Forumapulia to refinance a shopping mall near the southern Italian city of Bari.

Apollo’s commercial and residential REITs announced the signing of a merger agreement today, sending their stock prices drifting in opposite directions and prompting a New York law firm to follow up with a statement announcing an ‘investigation’ into the agreement.

Landesbank Hessen-Thuringen Girozentrale (Helaba) has provided a $110 million loan to retire the existing debt on Republic Place, a 214,000 sq ft Washington, DC, office property that was tied to a CMBS 1.0 deal.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) reduced its commercial real estate lending by around 36 percent during 2015, according to the bank’s full-year results published this morning (26 February).

Lloyds Banking Group continued to reduce its exposure to real estate lending during 2015 with a decrease to its gross direct real estate loan book of almost 10 percent, according to its full-year results.

Aareal Bank is targeting €7 billion - €8 billion of new lending business in 2016 after originating €9.6 billion in 2015, and also plans to step up loan distribution. The €9.6 billion lent last year is down on 2014‘s €10.7 billion, but it was substantially ahead of the bank’s target forecast of €6 billion - €7 billion.

Property investor and developer Derwent London has raised more than £100 million of new finance through a US private placement with three institutional investors.

The average loan interest rate ranged from 6 percent to a little over 4 percent, and the average loan maturity was 18 years, Richard Bassuk, chairman and CEO of advisory firm Greystone Bassuk Group, told Real Estate Capital.