EUROPE - AEW Europe has made a number of logistics investments across Europe for two of its closed-ended funds.

The European real estate manager purchased four prime logistics assets near Heathrow, west London from UK property company Brixton for £70.25m (€79.7m) for its value-added European Property Investors Special Opportunities fund.

The deal includes four of Brixton's largest single-let assets and reflected a portfolio net initial yield of 8.05%.

"This deal reflects exactly the type of opportunity we expected to emerge due to the dislocation in real estate markets caused by the credit crisis and was the rationale behind the launch of the EPISO fund," said Ric Lewis, chief investment officer at AEW Europe.

"We hope to be able to work with other partners in the market such as Brixton, where there are difficulties managing debt, or other structural portfolio problems that need to be solved in extremely challenging economic times."

Prologis European Properties (PEPR) has also signed binding agreements to sell a portfolio of Dutch and German logistics assets to AEW Europe for its core-plus fund Curzon Capital Partners (CCP) II.

The €119.5m portfolio consists of seven distribution warehouses across Germany and the Netherlands.

PEPR expects the deal to be completed in tranches over the next five to seven weeks, reflecting a net initial yield in excess of 8%.

Rob Reiskin, head of investments at AEW Europe, said: "This transaction is consistent with our strategy of acquiring prime, long-let, logistics assets."

Simon Nelson, head of asset management at PEPR, said: "We are pleased to have agreed this transaction at a level close to NAV [net asset value] within the current economic and global credit market environment. This demonstrates that there is still good demand for high-quality logistics assets."

Reiskin said the PEPR purchase "completed the investment programme" of Curzon Capital Partners II, having also recently purchased a distribution warehouses in France for the fund.

The 14,756 square metre property south of Lyon was acquired from regional developer EM2C for €8.9m, reflecting an initial yield of 8.2%.

"This defensive, cash flow-orientated investment will sit nicely within [the] fund's existing portfolio," Reiskin said.

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