GLOBLAL – CBRE Global Investors' multi-manager arm has set up a joint venture to invest in mezzanine debt in Germany, having raised more than $1bn (€730m) in capital for global real estate strategies this year.
It is one of a number of "exclusive arrangements" CBRE Global Multi Manager has established for its investors, which include two recent strategies with Ardstone to invest in the UK and Ireland.
Jeremy Plummer, chief executive, told IP Real Estate the company had just closed on "another exclusive" to invest in a niche property sector in the UK, but was unable to provide any more information.
He was also unable to name the joint venture partner for the German mezzanine strategy but described the arrangement as "a more local approach" to investing in a pooled real estate debt product.
"The only other way to get access to [German mezzanine] is to invest in a debt fund that is doing UK and Continental [Europe], probably with a strong UK bias," he said.
CBRE Global Multi Manager has already invested in UK mezzanine debt, having acted as a cornerstone investor in a fund in 2011, but Plummer said "Germany is actually more interesting" today.
This week, the company announced it had raised more than $1bn from investors in 2013 for new separate-account mandates and for its open-ended Global Alpha Fund, which now has more than $670m in commitments.
The separate accounts came from a diverse set of investors, including institutions from Japan, US, Switzerland, Germany and UK.
New business for the Global Alpha Fund came from UK, Dutch, Swiss and Irish institutional investors.
Several years ago the multi-manager represented a largely European clientele, predominated by UK investors.
"We took the decision to resource ourselves so we could invest globally," Plummer said. "Now we really feel the capital sources themselves are also global."
The Global Alpha Fund is typically for smaller investors and provides access to joint ventures, which are largely the preserve of their larger counterparts, by building economies of scale.
"Through the power of aggregation, we can give investors of any size access to the same types of investment that the supersize guys are tending to do these days, in some cases in preference to funds," Plummer said.
