Cording Real Estate Group has taken over Horizon Investment Management as it looks to grow its northern European business.
The investment manager’s move for Horizon gives it access to €300m of assets and takes its mandates to €2.4bn.
Pete Dove, chief executive of Cording, told IP Real Estate the firm is also looking to add coverage in Sweden to its business.
“We’re aiming to create a northern European investment management company,” Dove said. ”Germany was the first step, we’ve now added Holland and we’re looking at Sweden.
“We’ve done transactions in Denmark and Finland recently, but Sweden really is the centre of gravity and it’s where our investor base wants to be.”
Dove said northern Europe’s “deep, liquid markets” are target areas for Cording.
“We see opportunity in pricing.
“Holland is a little behind Germany, but it’s an important piece of the jigsaw,” he said.
Investors, he said, are keen on club deals at institutional level, with manager control over assets.
“The next phase in the cycle now is about income. We’re seeing appetite for that internationally – both via Germany and via the UK.”
Cording clients includes European institutions as well as its own Family Office Real Estate (FORE) partnership, launched in 2012. Dove said the firm is also talking to US investors.
Clients of Horizon, meanwhile, include TIAA-Henderson Real Estate.
Five Horizon staff, including Onno Scheij and based in Amsterdam, are being taken on by Cording, with Peter Winstanley, joint owner of Horizon, retiring.
“It’s harder to get market knowledge through ‘cold hires’,” said Dove.
Cording now has 87 staff in nine offices in the UK, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
The firm recently bought a portfolio of six industrial estates in the UK for £51m from a joint venture between Brockton Capital and Dunedin Property.
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