GLOBAL - An unnamed Canadian pension fund has acquired a prime Danish department store via a three-way joint venture with private equity firms MGPA and Partners Group.
The price tag for the asset, which is located at the intersection of Copenhagen's busiest retail streets, was €220m.
MGPA, which has the other two investors as clients, acquired the asset for its €841.5m MGPA Europe Fund III, which will hold a controlling share.
Among MGPA's Canadian institutional investors is the CAD153.2bn (€107.8bn) Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which has committed $300m to one of MGPA's Asian funds.
MGPA European chief financial officer Steve Willingham said: "This is a typical buy-fix-sell deal. It's a repositioning - not a redevelopment."
Willingham identified as drivers the tenancy of an established department store brand - the asset is partly occupied by department store Ilum on a 15-year lease - and the potential to create additional retail units for occupation, most likely by international retailers.
Although the opportunistic fund combines a top-down approach with a bottom-up approach, Willingham said the deal did not necessarily indicate an appetite for Denmark specifically or Scandinavian markets more broadly.
"In this case, our view was that this was an attractive price below replacement cost," he told IP Real Estate. "It's our first investment in Denmark, but there is no macro shift from anywhere to anywhere."
He acknowledged that the deal had included senior debt, but declined to disclose the percentage except to acknowledge that the other two investors "share our objectives on leverage".
