Cerberus Capital Management, the New York-headquartered global alternatives investment firm, has plans for upwards of $8 bn (€6.9 bn) of equity to deploy in European real estate.
The company has raised close to $5 bn of commitments for a global NPL fund with a predominant focus on ongoing opportunities in Europe. In addition, it has plans to raise another $3 bn of equity capital for its real estate strategies. Collectively, that means it has upwards of $8 bn of equity dry powder to deploy in 2019, the company said in an interview with PropertyEU.
The news comes after Cerberus celebrated its most prolific year in European real estate in 2018 with over $13.1 bn (€11.5 bn) of completed transactions counting both NPL deals and hard assets.
In other developments, the company says it is busy building a business in Spain to acquire and manage single-family rental properties along the lines of a larger platform it created in the US managing over 22,000 detached homes.
In addition, the company is building a high-tech, green hotel platform under its Qbic Hotel brand, which has been rolled out in London and Amsterdam and for which it is in the process of opening locations in Brussels and Manchester this year.
Furthermore, Cerberus is developing a last-mile logistics platform in urban areas across Europe.
Among the company’s jumbo deals in 2018 was Project Marina with BBVA bank in Spain where it has consistently been in the headlines. The transaction concerned around 78,000 property assets with a gross book value of €13 bn and a servicing platform including 400 employees with a transaction value of around €5 bn, making it Europe’s largest recorded real estate deal of 2018.
The Cerberus real estate team is led by Lee Millstein who serves as president of Cerberus Global Investors and global head of real estate. Ron Rawald is head of international real estate. Daniel Dejanovic serves as head of European real estate.
Dejanovic said: ‘We are very optimistic about 2019 given our pipeline in Europe.’
